Catching Up With Comedians Performing On National TV In May and June 2024

Comedians, comedy fans and industry folk all enjoyed clicking over to my old site (The Comic’s Comic) to catch up on clips of comedians who performed on late-night TV over the years (back when we had many more opportunities to enjoy that, from Letterman to Colbert, plus Conan, Kimmel, Ferguson or Corden, Meyers, and Fallon). Not to mention all of the showcase shows on Comedy Central. We still have regular bookings on Fallon’s Tonight Show, but so much else has disappeared in terms of opportunities for comedians to gather clips and credits.

Paramount’s decision last week to effectively shutter the clip archives on Comedy Central is a stark reminder of how much things have changed, and can change. You can still find some full episodes of shows and specials on Paramount+, but the clips are but memories now. And if you search my old site, you’ll find that’s not an uncommon experience as clips from other networks and shows often vanish whenever the execs decide to stop paying the bills to keep the clips online. Big bummers all around. I’ll get into the discourse of it all separately.

But for now, this is a grand time to remember to celebrate comedians on TV, so here’s a roundup of performances from recent months on America’s Got Talent, The Talk, and the various late-night talkers.

America’s Got Talent

AGT Season 19 has aired five weeks of auditions as of Tuesday night, and while the show has crowned a few ventriloquists as champs, a stand-up comedian has yet to win the competition. Here are the comedians we’ve seen so far who have a chance to change that this summer.

Erica Rhodes

TT Brothers

Learnmore Jonasi

Jonasi, from Zimbabwe, won last year’s Boston Comedy Festival competition and earned a GOLDEN BUZZER!

The Talk

The CBS daytime talk show equivalent of The View is wrapping up production this year, but not before running a weekly stand-up showcase on Fridays. Here’s who they put in the spotlight this spring.

Kelsey Cook