These are boom times in comedy. As of Sept. 25, stand-up comics sold 4.9 million tickets to 2,078 live performances reported to Billboard Boxscore, for a total gross of $359.7 million and counting. The major streaming services, such as Netflix, Hulu and HBO, regularly release new comedy specials, and on-demand audio and video streams of comedy content have topped $1.32 billion through Oct. 3.
Given these outsized numbers, many in the business say its time that stand-up specials and albums got more shine from the organizations that give out Grammy and Emmy awards.
“Comedy ebbs and it flows, but as of the last few years it’s been having a real boom, and this is an industry that deserves respect,” says stand-up star Iliza Shlesinger, whose latest special, A Different Animal, premiered on Amazon Prime in March and is entered for Grammy consideration for best comedy album. “I mean, some of these comics are their own microeconomies. We’re coming to respect podcasting as an industry. We’re respecting influencers. The state of comedy is one of the oldest art forms next to prostitution, and it deserves more respect.”
Iliza Shlesinger on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
Weiss Eubanks/NBCUniversal via G
With Grammy voting underway — first-round voting ends Wednesday (Oct. 15) and the final-round voting runs from Dec. 12-Jan. 5 — the conversation has turned to the Feb. 1 Grammys ceremony and whether the best comedy album category will be featured on the prime-time telecast, or given out during a pre-telecast ceremony which is streamed on Grammy.com.
The Recording Academy cycles categories in and out of the main event, and the last time the best comedy album winner was announced on the telecast was 2020, when Dave Chappelle won for the recording of his Sticks & Stones special.
A Recording Academy rep says, “We don’t know yet what categories will be featured on the telecast this year, nor do we announce that in advance. But all of our 95 categories are always being considered, including best comedy album.”
Shlesinger says the category more than deserves inclusion in prime time. “At the end of the day, it is an artist performing an audio art,” she tells Billboard Comedy. “So, what’s the difference between [stand-up] and a song? If I wrote it, I composed it, I set up the order of the jokes, there is a musicality to it. So it should be presented in prime time.”
Living comedy legend Lewis Black, who’s been nominated six times in the best comedy album category and won twice, agrees. “Comedy is certainly big enough,” he says. “And that [pre-telecast] afternoon thing is in a glorified auditorium. There is no buffet.”
Black says that when he received his first Grammy in 2007 for The Carnegie Hall Performance, his award was given out the afternoon of the telecast. “I was irritated by it until — here’s the kicker — you go through a press run afterwards, and I’m behind Chick Corea [who won two Grammys that year]. I said, ‘You’re not on at night?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘You are kidding. I can understand why I’m not on at night, but you’re f—ing Chick Corea.’ Here’s one of the great jazz artists — an idiom that is one of America’s real contributions to music and art,” Black continues. “And they’ve got him in the afternoon with polka and people who read fast.”
Lewis Black performs at The Brown Theatre on October 17, 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images
The Television Academy also relegates comedy to its two-day pre-telecast Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony, and those in the funny business say it’s additionally frustrating that stand-up specials are lumped into the broad outstanding variety special (pre-recorded) category (and have only been eligible for that since the early 1990s).
The last time a stand-up special won was in 2020, when Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones took the honor. Since then, major box-office draws such as Adam Sandler, Ali Wong, John Mulaney, Bill Burr and Sarah Silverman have lost out to tributes to TV legends Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke and Conan O’Brien, an Adele concert, and a Disney+ Hamilton performance.
The comedians who spoke to Billboard stress that they’re not throwing shade at those comedy greats. Rather, they say, the playing field is not level, and stand-up specials should get their own category. “I love Conan, but I’m like, ‘Wait, these big-event variety and tribute shows have got 12 writers on them, a director, a DP, a list of producers, and everyone’s got their finger in the pie,’” says Bert Kreischer, whose 2025 Netflix special Lucky is also up for Grammy consideration (and who, staying on brand, did his interview shirtless). “We deserve our own category — just stand-up. We write our specials, and quite often we produce them.”
Bert Kreischer speaks onstage as Netflix is a Joke presents FYSEE LA Comedy Night at The Comedy Store on May 29, 2025 in West Hollywood, California.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images
“I’ve been beating this drum for a while,” says Shlesinger. “It’s apples and oranges. There’s no reason that stand-up specials should be in contention with other types of specials, other than that comedy always gets overlooked.”
A Television Academy spokesperson says the organization “continually evaluates its Emmy Awards categories for their relevance to our medium’s trends. Both the comedy and variety genres have been an important part of Emmy recognition since the inception of the competition, and the Academy is committed to awarding achievements for comedy and variety as determined by the Academy’s board of governors, in consultation with our members and the industry.”
It’s also not lost on the comedy industry that, while their categories haven’t qualified for prime time, comedians are often the go-to choice to host awards telecasts. Trevor Noah has done Grammys duty for the last five years (the 2026 host has not yet been named), and Jon Stewart, Garry Shandling and Ellen DeGeneres have all hosted multiple Grammy telecasts as well. Nate Bargatze, Kenan Thompson, Michael Che and Colin Jost, and Jimmy Kimmel are among the comedians who’ve anchored the Prime Time Emmys, while Nikki Glaser and Ricky Gervais helmed the Golden Globes and Chris Rock, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes the Oscars. Adding the awards to the Grammy and Emmy telecasts would attract even more comedians to attend the ceremony, and the winners are almost certain to give entertaining acceptance speeches — which could goose ratings, which are trending downward in general.
“Some of your favorite comics are some of your favorite stars,” Shlesinger says. “So we should be able to put our faces on prime-time award shows. Comedy is being consumed just as much in popular culture as everything else.”
