Last Comic Standing
American reality television talent show
Last Comic Standing is an American reality television talent competition show on NBC that aired from June 1, 2003, to August 9, 2010, and again in 2014 and 2015. Each season a comedian from an initially large group of hopefuls was picked as a winner. For the first seven seasons, the winner received a cash prize and a television special; for season eight in 2014, the winner won a cash prize, a talent deal with NBC, and a half-hour scripted project developed by Universal Television.
Format
The show varied its format season by season. For seasons 1–2 and 4–7, NBC talent scouts Ross Mark and Bob Read held open casting calls in various locations around the United States. At each casting call, Mark and Read selected comics to participate in callback auditions in front of live audiences. Mark and Read selected a predetermined number of comics from each callback, who were invited to participate in a semifinal qualifying round.
The comics who advanced to the semifinal qualifying round were divided into two groups. In Season Four, 40 comics were divided into two groups of 20; the comics performed competing against each other at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, California. During the semifinal qualifying rounds, a panel of celebrity judges, and the show's producers, selected the finalists who would move forward to the final qualifying round, and live together in a group residence.
The public source identifies “Last Comic Standing” as american reality television talent show. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Last, Comic and Standing.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2449514. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2003, 2010, 2014 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Last Comic Standing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.