Sebastian Maniscalco is receiving a lot of unwanted attention from some of his fellow comedians. According to his critics, Sebastian's SiriusXM comedy channel is hurting stand-up comedians. Those critics state that, in some cases, it is freezing them out of a profitable form of royalty payments.
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In April 2026, SiriusXM ended its long-running 'Raw Comedy' channel. It was replaced by Sebastian Maniscalco's 24/7 comedy radio. SiriusXM describes the new never-ending channel as being both "curated and headlined" by Maniscalco.
"Comedians including Liz Miele and Greg Stone are calling on Maniscalco and SiriusXM to reverse course, arguing the revamped channel has sharply concentrated airplay among better-known performers," The New York Post reports.
Data from XMPlaylist reportedly shows that the number of individual comics receiving airtime on the show has free-fallen from 812 in April to 275 in September. That's a huge drop. So, it's easy to see why there is growing frustration within the comedy community. After all, if it impacts your pay, emotions are going to run high.
Miele has also addressed the issue during a recent video that was uploaded to Instagram.
"The problem is," Miele said. "Raw went from playing 800 working-class comedians to now playing fewer than 300 celebrity comedians like Joan Rivers, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, and Norm Macdonald."
Comedians Are Losing Money Because Of Sebastian Maniscalco's Show
As Miele continued her video, she explained that, with the show set up the way it is, comedians are losing money they could have earned in royalties.
"And it is devastating," she continued. "Because of this action, hundreds of comedians will no longer be able to have these royalties."
Liz Stone has also addressed Maniscalco. He opted to give him the benefit of the doubt when discussing the negative impact the show is having on the comedic community.
"I'm going to assume you didn't notice [the effects of the rebrand]," Stone said in his own video, which he posted to Instagram. "Cause no Italian is going to take money out of the hardworking man's pocket."
It's likely that the majority of comedians would welcome the return of 'Raw Comedy' on SiriusXM. However, that is unlikely to happen. Hopefully, the pushback can lead to both sides finding some middle ground. Yet, as things stand, Maniscalco isn't the most popular comedian amongst his peers.
