Well I have watched my very last Last Comic Standing. Ever.

Last night was the absolute final straw.

It’s pretty common knowledge that reality shows are far more controlled and scripted than they would have you believe, and Last Comic Standing is generally considered one of the worst. The auditions are a sham, you have to be invited by the producers to be taken seriously. Your act is edited to make it appear how they want you to, the judges are basically set dressing, and most of the acts that make it through are on the roster of executive producer/manager Barry Katz. They favour personality over talent (or if you look at the previous winner, they are also keen on a magnificent rack)

I can think of two big reasons why she probably didn't have to stand in line very long

They are after all casting a show, not running an ACTUAL talent contest. There have been lots of blogs written about this very subject, here’s one of them if you are interested.

I knew all this going in, and I still watched it. I avoided it at first out of resentment, as I pitched a stand up reality show, only to be told a) I wasn’t attractive enough to host it, and b) it didn’t matter anyway, because there was no market for it. Seven months later, Last Comic Standing. To be clear, I’m not suggesting they stole it, I’m suggesting the producer I pitched it to was very wrong about there not being a market for it.

But despite this I found that I did end up watching it sporadically, because I am a stand up comedian and curiosity got the better of me. Plus I often spotted friends and acquaintances in the audition reel, so it was kind of fun to watch it for that.

I stuck with it when the brilliant and talented Sean Lecomber didn’t make it through.

I stuck through it when the laid back and also quite brilliant Sean Cullen was voted off

I stuck through it when I saw people I knew get only HALF of their joke out , then to have the camera cut away to a “judge “ rolling their eyes in the “These people suck” montage.

This season I even stuck it out through the annoying stick thin judge and her braying laugh washing over terribly unfunny jokes.

In spite of EVERYTHING I still watched the show.

Until last night.

The auditioner was a guy in a mascot costume. I recognized it right away as one of the one eyed creature things from the Despicable Me ads I had seen traipsing across the bottom of my screen.

He said nothing, and the judges pretended to be confused, not knowing what was going on..then Skinny McAnnoyinglaugh picks up a sheet of paper and says

“It says here you are a Minion from…”

Click.

Turned the channel. Never to return.

It’s not bad enough there is far more ad time than show to begin with, plus whatever it is they scroll across the screen at the bottom, now they have to make THE ACTUAL CONTENT ADVERTISING?

Despicable you indeed.

It is just greedy corporate thinking and an absolute insult to my intelligence as a viewer. I can totally picture someone devoid of a soul or a sense of humor in a boardroom pitching this saying “Yeah, the judges can riff for a little bit, make it funny, we’ll get some promo, it’ll be great. Tell em to do it.”

No. No No No. Are they even TRYING anymore? I don’t expect a “reality” show not to be a corrupt, fixed, corporate entity…but I DO expect them to make a little effort to HIDE it better!

If you don’t HIDE it…you are saying to me the viewer “Fuck you, you are an idiot anyway. Just take the product placement and LIKE it, Bitches. By the way, we already know who is going to win, these people outside are only here so we can get a shot of them lined up.”

I turned immediately to Craig Ferguson who was interviewing a “Miss Normal Girl” pageant winner with a foul mouthed bunny puppet. It was ten times more intelligent and twenty times funnier.

Do you hear that Last Comic Standing? A guy with 1/10th your budget, WINGING it with a HAND PUPPET he probably bought at the fucking MALL was way more entertaining than you.

Hamlet has a quote in it about lust sating itself in a celestial bed and preying on garbage. That’s what we are doing. Reality TV, Pop music, tabloid journalism, it’s all garbage and we continue to eat it up. I’m not saying everyone should be watching Masterpiece Theatre (although every once in awhile wouldn’t hurt) but the more we let them insult our intelligence the more they will do it.

The line will be drawn here.

I’m starting with no more Last Comic Standing… who’s with me?

Dear Reader:

Some of you have been wondering what exactly has been going on with Canadian cable television? What is this argument between the large cable providers and the networks in Canada? Likely you have seen the advertisements with the sincere looking broadcast school graduates doing their best to represent either side of this issue, whilst also gamely trying to disguise the knowledge they surely must have that, because they accepted the work as the spokespeople for said companies, they will never work in Canada again, for either cable or network television.

Basically, what is happening is this:

Canada is a vast nation that is sparsely populated. Really, to comprehend just how vast is difficult, because so many of us live along the US border, anxiously awaiting an invasion because we still have some clean water. This, by the way, is the reason that we are actively using up all the water we can in the oilsands. If you Americans come for our water, and we have already poisoned it all, first point goes to us. We’ll burn the crops all the way to Moscow, this is just preemptive.

In any case, Canada is huge, and there are literally only 12 advertising dollars to go around, and not that many companies willing to maintain the infrastructure required to build, oh, say, cable towers, or transmitters, or amusing scripts. Canada is a the proud nation of the monopoly. How many phone companies are there really? Well, essentially three, and they also provide cable. Ask about our airlines.

Meanwhile, these telephone companies which also provide cable have bought, sold, and traded ownership of the original Canadian television networks dozens of times over. Evidence of this is in the logos displayed the end of our local news broadcasts, but also in the naming of many sports arenas.

Consequently, some of the monopolies want to blame the other monopolies for costing them money to do things like stuff and things. For this reason, they are running low-production-value attack ads about each other, and have set up tedious websites about how correct their monopoly is compared to how incorrect the other fellow’s monopoly is. These ads are intentionally low-production-value so that you won’t get the impression they could afford do better ads with more sincere spokespeople, and sexier actors pretending to be real people on the street. Who doesn’t trust the man on the street? Only an asshole, they hope! Caveat Vox Populi.

Now, I know strictly speaking, these are not technically monopolies, more like oligarchies, or, if you prefer, a retarded cartel, or “retardtel” which is another telephone company name.

Some of the issues stem around the purchase of American television shows, which all Canadians prefer to watch, because you cats throw crazy dollars at your sit coms, and we have 75 cents. Quality is subjective everywhere, some Americans liked Degrassi, and some Canadians can watch “The Hills” and still sleep at night. Personally, I believe The Hills is responsible for my chronic diarrhea.

Other issues surround the creation of local content, which actually should read “news” because all that hilarious cable-access-local-tv has long since gone by the wayside. So, they say “local content” but they really mean “local news” and having local news gives some broadcasters and some cable networks a chance to redistribute the $12 advertising dollars in Canada somewhat more regionally. There was a time that Canadian television looked a lot like SCTV, and now, it looks a lot like everything else. Oh, and the local news is full of syndicated packages from other stations.

In any case, the CEOs of both the networks who provide “local programming” and the CEOs of the cable companies both have a problem. The $12 in advertising is not enough to pay for the hookers and blow they purchased before the recent financial issues, and now they have already booked appointments for said hookers, and said blow, and being blown by said hookers while sniffing said blow off of said hookers, and this has brought about a moderate financial crunch.

Once the hookers have been hooked, and the blow has been blown, and the TV executives have been blown, they will need to find places to hide the bodies, because they have killed the hookers-This is simply what television executives do. Consequently, they will have to dump the hookers in the ENG vans, or the cable vans, or whatever, and drive them out to the rural site of some kind of transmitting infrastructure, and pay everyone slightly less than $12 to shut up about the whole thing. This makes regionalization a real concern, because if I only have $3 in western Canada to shut up the police, farmers and cell phone tower maintenance guys about my dead hookers and obvious severe coke habit, it is simply not enough.

Luckily, the Canadian taxpayer is being asked to take it up the ass on taxes, or to pay more on their cable bill. Wait, did I say luckily? Oh, I meant “retardtelly”. Fortunately, no matter which side wins, taxes will inevitably go up, and my cable bill will inevitably go up.

Oh, and on a final note, I’m not paying an additional $2 a month for a digital cable box, because you are obligated to provide this service by law in the upcoming years, so it shouldn’t cost me $2. Improve your analogue service first, or, credit me for the shitty analogue service.

I hope that clarifies the Canadian TV issues for you.

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