A snapshot of the comedy industry as of November 2025
The New York Comedy Festival just concluded its 2025 edition on Sunday, and while it has been far too long since we’ve taken proper stock of the “State of the Industry,” it’s about time we at least took this moment to reflect on what’s going on in comedy these days, from the great to the mediocre to the just plain ugly.
I had no idea, for instance, that the AI-generated “actress” Tilly Norwood that we have a comedian to thank and blame for it?!? Specifically, Dutch comedian Eline van der Velden.
This is the introduction to Tilly via an AI-generated comedy sketch in July via van der Velden and her company, Particle6. She told Variety last week about getting “Tilly Norwood” an agent? “I didn’t think it was controversial.”
In a new interview published this week with The Hollywood Reporter, she added: “I totally sympathize with Hollywood being in a really tough spot at the moment, and actors thinking this is coming for their job. That’s not what our plan is with Tilly at all.” Her plan it seems is to be on the forefront of digital animation. “We don’t want to be replacing real actors unless there’s a case for a digital twin situation in there, which would be done with the consent of the actor. Tilly was never meant to be replacing real actors in that genre. She was only meant to live in her own universe, which is what we’re creating.”
Her company announced a new series with the History Channel where they’re essentially using their technology to simulate time travel back to show what Dutch cities looked like in previous eras, which doesn’t sound like A.I. so much as the next iteration of CGI, since the same sorts of people will still need to massage the computer-generated graphics. Kind of like how today’s error-prone AI Overview forced to the top of Google is really just a much sloppier version of old Google. Could we pretty pretty please go back and consider this whole “A.I.” fad this generation’s New Coke?!
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Nateland In Nashville
Nate Bargatze worked at Opryland USA when he was a teenager growing up in Tennessee, and this week he announced plans to bring a theme park back to Nashville, with his name on it!
“Opryland was great; We were devastated when it closed,” Bargatze said. “I want to make some movies and continue to tour and then hopefully build a world here. You see Universal Studios. I kind of would like that to be a Nateland. We can have rides and start making movies here. I think I know what is missing in entertainment and I think this would work.”
Bargatze’s company, Nateland, has partnered with Storyland Studios, whose previous clients include the Legoland Water Park. They’re reviewing possible sites in and around Nashville for a 100+ acre park that would include theme park rides, restaurants, stores, and possibly a hotel.
Which reminds me…
Pete Davidson popped up on Saturday Night Live earlier this month to remind us that he and Colin Jost bought a decommissioned Staten Island ferry, with plans working with the owners of The Stand to turn the ferry into a floating comedy club. The New York Times recently published a big update on how much money the endeavor has and is costing them (gift link), prompting Davidson to joke that’s why he took the cash to perform in Riyadh.
“The Business of Comedy”
So, back to that panel I attended and photographed that appears at the top of this dispatch…
One major advantage of having mainstream media sign on as a sponsor of your comedy festival? You’ll get bonus converage! Such was the case for the New York Comedy Festival, which had tie-ins with ABC-7, Vulture, the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, SiriusXM, iHeartRadio, and Variety. The latter trade mag moderated a whipped-together panel called “The Business of Comedy,” half of the panel consisting of the main names and faces putting on said festival.
The one part that jumped out at me the most, which I’ll share now, came when the Variety reporter asked Lilly Burns about comedy development in 2025. Burns, co-founder of JAX Media (and fun fact: daughter of iconic documentary filmmaker Ken), has shepherded several critically-acclaimed and/or popular comedies to cable and streaming over the past decade and a half. Among them: Broad City, Inside Amy Schumer (for which Burns shared in a Peabody Award), Search Party, Russian Doll; and she’s currently in production on the upcoming Netflix series for Bert Kreischer, Free Bert.
Here’s what Lilly Burns had to say about then versus now in comedy development:
“The end goal was a television show. And so whatever you were putting out online, whatever you were doing, even with stand-up, it was sort of like the goal is a television show. And I don’t think that that’s true anymore. I think that there are a lot of different ways to succeed in comedy. And obviously, live stand-up is at its height right now. But I also think that you could build a career making comedy online or making something in short-form that doesn’t necessarily have the sort of goal, that the gold ring isn’t a TV show anymore so i think i’ve been thinking a lot about what how to continue making high-quality comedy and does it fit that half -hour format anymore? I’m not sure. Maybe there’s a different way in now, but I think things are really changing in terms of what it is. A linear line towards having a TV show, I’m not sure anymore.”
So if not TV, then what now?
“I mean, this is what I’m trying to figure out right now. I think that without Comedy Central really functioning anymore, and without places like IFC, which was essentially a farm team for young comedians, you could get a show to a certain extent at a relatively mid-level in your career or something, and then the world would learn about you. And I think without that kind of farm-team mentality, the only comedies that you’re seeing getting made are the sort of big star, big idea — And I think that comedy suffers. Because when you do something like that, you’re sort of not introducing new things and weird things and different cadences. So that’s why it sort of comes back around to that thought. Like if people have a different kind of fluency with what comedy means online, then we, I don’t know if I call myself a gatekeeper, but I’m somewhere near the gate, need to start to learn from that cadence and figure out how to translate it. Otherwise, you aren’t going to get young viewers. You can’t just keep doing the same thing over and over again.”
Jeff Ross, who said his live Roast of Tom Brady on Netflix generated 2.5 billion viewing minutes, noted that YouTube as a whole can also achieve similarly big audience metrics.
“I think the question is, how does TV get the comedy back from the streamers and YouTube? I think being more in tune with what talent is doing, the writers and the performers, the creators. You know there’s a big merger going on now. You know, you talk about Comedy Central. I used to joke with my lawyer 20 years ago like what are the rights (for the Friars Club roasts, which begat Comedy Central’s own branded roasts)? Why are we giving this to them? What if they’re not around in 20 years and they would laugh like how can Comedy Central not be around? And now we’ve outlived Comedy Central, we’ve outlived a lot of these networks. MTV is pulling everything and they own my entire catalog, Comedy Central. So now I’m going, well, now somebody’s selling that to someone else and no one’s mentioning anything to the talent. And they’re just selling it off for parts to whoever they want. And this is something I predicted or worried about a long time ago. So I think if the big buyers, the big companies that are buying up these companies, start looking back and pulling the ladder down and pulling the comics up with them, then I think they’ll succeed. But if they keep turning their back on those old buyouts and just going, oh, we’re going to just put this up anywhere we want, run it as much as we want and wear it out. I think they’ll also wear themselves out.”
Other perspectives from comedians right now
Much like everything else in capitalist society, the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to widen. For comedians or talent in comedy, there’s room for people in the middle rungs of the show-business ladder to even make a living.
Here’s what Chris Gethard had to say:
In the world of podcasting, big names get all the money, too. Headgum just laid off 30 percent of its staff (Variety). Meanwhile, The Joe Rogan Experience, no longer a Spotify exclusive, rocketed back to the top spot among all podcasts on Apple in 2025? SmartLess ranked 6th overall among Apple listeners. (THR)
Here’s Patton Oswalt reminding us just how ridiculous it is to see Rogan having such influence now, with some added context and perspective as he spoke with Jay Mohr:
And just for another shade of inspiration shrouded in dread, here’s Samantha Bee encouraging the people at the top of every industry with “f— you money” to remember what they can do with that in this day and age. As opposed to, you know, capitulating at the first possible moment.
Congrats on Zac Webb’s Big Shaq’ing Break!
Time to pivot to positive news!
Zac Webb made his nationwide/global debut last Thursday during Amazon Prime Videos’s NFL broadcast by doing stand-up as part of the new JCPenney campaign, and getting introduced by Shaquille O’Neal as a talk-show host in a store?! Go figure! Way to go Zac!
This Month In Late-Night Sets
One of the things I know comedians, comedy fans and bookers alike appreciated from my pre-newsletter days were my notifications when stand-ups did stand-up on the late-night shows. We have a lot of catching up to do!
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert hasn’t aired a stand-up set since Labor Day week. Jimmy Kimmel Live invites tons of comedians on, but prefers to promote them from the comfort of the panel chair (or in the summer, allowing stand-ups to guest host for him). Late Night with Seth Meyers just had on Greta Titelman, which represented Late Night‘s first stand-up set in seven months.
In the past couple of weeks, though, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon has really been the one show to keep showcasing stand-ups. To wit…
Last week Fallon welcomed Fiona Cauley for her TV debut:
Staten Island’s Peter Revello also made his debut after winning the Comedy Prize competition last month in Shreveport:
The week before that, Nick Murphy made his debut!
Congrats to all!
Comedy Men Behaving Badly
On the other end of the spectrum, with all of the hubbub surrounding the drip drip drip of disclosures about who associated with Jeffrey Epstein (and even Sean Combs, for that matter, and all of the other sex offenders, both famous and not, who haven’t been exposed), you might’ve missed the news about Jon Reep?
Reep won Last Comic Standing back in 2007 (that year’s finalists included Lavell Crawford, Gerry Dee, and Amy Schumer), but he has scrubbed his internet presence since his September arrest for using said internet allegedly to download child pornography. Please get all of your bad is that a hemi jokes out while you can, because it’s both too soon and too late at this point, you hacks. For those who completely missed the story, here’s how Reep’s local TV news station in North Carolina played it two months ago. Reep turned himself in after a grand jury returned multiple counts of sexual exploitation of minors, and was released on a bond of $260,000, pending trial.
But Reep is not the only guy in comedy facing charges of sexual misconduct.
Michael Smith, known as Bubbles on Netflix’s Trailer Park Boys was scheduled to be arraigned today in Halifax, hacving been charged with sexual assault for an alleged incident in 20217 in Nova Scotia (from The Hollywood Reporter via the Canadian Broadcasting Company).
And FX cancelled English Teacher following its second season. The series featured stand-ups in great supporting roles, including Carmen Christopher and Sean Patton. But the show’s creator, Brian Jordan Alvarez, had been accused of sexual assault by his former friend and co-star in his 2015 webseries. Although FX never came down one way or the other following the explosive December 2024 New York Magazine article, the show’s cancellation indirectly closes the book on that.
But let’s not end on sour notes.
This weekend in live comedy in NYC
Opening this week, through Dec. 22 at SoHo Playhouse
Friday November 21
- Red Bastard, 7pm, BCC
- Beth Stelling, 730pm, The Bell House
Saturday November 22
- Beth Stelling, 730pm, The Bell House
- Maz Jobrani, 730pm, Town Hall
- Gone Fishing with Wally Baram and Vikrant Sunderlal, 730pm, Union Hall
- Francesca D’Uva, 10pm, The Bell House
Sunday November 23
- Daniel Maseda: Be Good! with Paulette, 730pm, Union Hall
- John Oliver & Seth Meyers, 730pm, Beacone Theatre
- Vintage Basement with Max & Nicky: Farewell to New York Show, 8pm, Littlefield
I’ve started keeping a running calendar of recommended live comedy shows around New York City on my separate LIVE Comedy Shows page. If you want me to consider including your show, please let me know!
Last Things Last
And last but not least, here’s Marcello Hernandez on SNL last week impersonating Sebastian Maniscalco:
Maniscalco’s reaction on Instagram? “You gotta be kidding me”
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