Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn

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Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn
Genre	Comedy/Talk show
Creator(s)	Colin Quinn
Starring	Colin Quinn Nick DiPaolo Greg Giraldo Jim Norton Patrice Oneal Keith Robinson Rich Vos
Country of origin	USA
No. of episodes	Approximately 250
Production
Executive producer(s)	Colin Quinn Liz Stanton Ken Ober
Running time	Approximately 21 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Comedy Central
Original run	(Test) 2002-12-09 – 2002-12-19 (Regular) 2003-03-10–2004-11-04
Links

Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn was a comedic talk show on Comedy Central which attempted to be a more vulgar or working-class version of a previous Comedy Central production, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. Like Politically Incorrect, the show featured roundtable discussions, inviting various guests of many views, mixing mostly comics entertainers expressing themselves with journalists and political figures. Quinn's regular guests consisted mainly of Comedy Central affiliated comedians from the Comedy Cellar in New York City. It aired weeknights at 11:30 p.m. ET, immediately following The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

In 2002, Tough Crowd debuted on Comedy Central with an eight-episode test series which ran Mondays through Thursdays from December 9 to December 19. The show was picked up in January 2003, and the regular series began its 21-week run on 2003-03-10. The show was placed on an "indefinite hiatus" in October 2004, with what was presumably its final episode airing on 2004-11-04.^[1]

The show featured Colin Quinn and four other comedian guests discussing current events and issues. The emphasis was on politics, current events and social issues. The show opened with a monologue by Quinn; after the opening credits. Near the end there was usually a sketch of some sort, followed by each of the four guests doing a brief monologue on a particular topic that was discussed earlier in the episode.

1 Show format
2 Guests
3 Series finale and epilogue
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Show format

The show was presented as an alternative, unpolished and more accessible political "round-table" discussion/shouting-match program in the manner of CNN's Crossfire, taking cue from Bill Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect which some viewers felt had become too polished and pretentious thus becoming an established organ of the esteemed news media it had originally set out to counterbalance. Part of Quinn's informal and unorthodox approach made it a point not to edit out jokes that bombed, this would often lead to uncomfortable pauses which may have appeared awkward to the mainstream television audiance.

Frequent guest Jim Norton said, "Comedy is not always a smooth gem that is perfectly timed and it certainly doesn’t always elicit the hoped-for response. Sometimes comedy is sloppy and poorly delivered, Colin refused to be some polished, blazer-wearing jerkoff of a host and crucified any one of us when we tried to lapse into that smooth, disingenuous nonsense. You saw us as we really are on Tough Crowd; sometimes very funny, other times embarrassingly unfunny, sometimes hypocritically self-righteous and preachy and other times just plain mean. But we were never afraid to show our flaws."

[edit] Guests

[edit] Regular guests

These comedians were regularly rotated into the show's panels and were often paired together:

[edit] Frequent guests

These comedians made numerous appearances, with some serving as informal regulars:

[edit] Famous guests

These well-known comedians made only one or few appearances:

[edit] Series finale and epilogue

Jim Norton addressed the program's demise on his blog, where he mentioned that Comedy Central would send down notes to the show discouraging the predominate focus on political topics and discussions about race and ethnic issues. The network claimed this was only because they already had scripted/talk programming that addressed these issues, referring to the The Daily Show and Chappelle's Show, and warned that some of the views expressed on "Tough Crowd" did not appeal to the demographics at which Comedy Central's current business model was aimed. Due to the sometimes outspoken and counter-cultural opinions that were expressed by Quinn and many of his guests (notably Jim Norton, Judy Gold and Nick DiPaolo), the show was seen by some as much more abrasive and less predictable than the target Comedy Central viewer was allegedly used to.

The last show contained emotional monologues by Quinn, who attacked his detractors (such as The New York Times) as being hypocritical and elitist for their negative reviews. He also attempted to define "comedic integrity" as the ability to critique the hypocrisy of society, but to be real enough to admit that you are as guilty of it as anyone else. The implication was that many political comedians spend all their time criticizing society and others, but rarely themselves.

After placing Tough Crowd on hiatus, Comedy Central attempted to fill the vacant timeslot with various programs, including Too Late with Adam Carolla, The Graham Norton Effect, Wanda Does It, and repeats of The Daily Show and Chappelle's Show – all of which were met with limited success. Currently, the slot is occupied by Stephen Colbert's scripted spin-off of the very popular and media respected "Daily Show", The Colbert Report, a less controversial, more conventional news parody show which averages three times the ratings of the less conventional, and more pedestrian "Tough Crowd" in the same time slot.