Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn

Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn
Format	Comedy/Talk show
Created by	Colin Quinn
Starring	Colin Quinn Nick DiPaolo Greg Giraldo Judy Gold Jim Norton Patrice Oneal Keith Robinson Rich Vos
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	200+
Production
Executive producer(s)	Colin Quinn Liz Stanton Ken Ober
Running time	21 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Comedy Central
Original run	December 9, 2002 (2002-12-09) – November 4, 2004 (2004-11-04)

Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn is a comedic talk show that aired on Comedy Central. 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. The show was similar in content to The Colin Quinn Show, Quinn's previous TV show.

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 March 10, 2003. The show was placed on an "indefinite hiatus" in October 2004, with what was presumably its final episode airing the Thursday following Election Day in 2004.

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. 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.

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 Maher's Politically Incorrect. Part of Quinn's approach made it a point not to edit out jokes that bombed, often leading to uncomfortable pauses enjoyed by fans of the Cringe comedy style, which may have appeared awkward to the mainstream television audience. Quinn also reprimanded guests who dropped cheap applause lines while on the show, and, unusually for Comedy Central, regularly featured conservative comedians like Nick DiPaolo and Jim Norton. DiPaolo, Norton and other Tough Crowd alums now make semi-regular appearances on Fox News' Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld, a similarly formatted show.

Guests

Regular guests

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

• Nick DiPaolo
• Greg Giraldo
• Judy Gold
• Jim Norton
• Patrice Oneal
• Keith Robinson
• Rich Vos

Frequent guests

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

• Dave Attell
• Todd Barry
• Lewis Black
• Bill Burr
• Louis C.K.
• Pat Cooper
• Jim David
• Greg Fitzsimmons
• Jim Florentine
• Todd Glass
• Kevin Hart
• Allan Havey
• Dom Irrera
• Robert Kelly
• Laurie Kilmartin
• Lynne Koplitz
• Marc Maron
• Ralphie May
• Bonnie McFarlane
• Paul Mooney
• Ken Ober
• Patton Oswalt
• Tom Papa
• Brian Posehn
• Greg Proops
• Sarah Silverman
• T. Sean Shannon
• Sherrod Small
• Paul F. Tompkins

Famous guests

• George Carlin
• Dave Chappelle
• Stephen Colbert
• Will Ferrell
• Al Franken
• Janeane Garofalo
• Denis Leary
• Penn Jillette
• Tim Meadows
• Chris Rock
• Jerry Seinfeld
• Jon Stewart
• Robert Klein
• Victoria Jackson
• Andrew Dice Clay
• Patrice Oneal

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 predominant 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 Daily Show with Jon Stewart 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.

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 defined "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.

External links

• Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn at the Internet Movie Database
• Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn at TV.com