I think Comedy Central does a good job of giving stand up comedians recognition. That’s how I learned about Sarah Silverman, Dave Chappelle, Mitch Hedberg and Patton Oswald among many others. The network seem to have several comics on contract to appear at those lame roasts every year.
The Lamp was in town recently. I contemplated making Tracy go and see her.
When Comedy Central started up about all they could afford to show was unknown and little known comics. They pretty much just ran standup shows 24/7. I guess some of those guys made it big.
Joe Rogan’s standup really took off AFTER Fear Factor (which was after Newsradio). This was partially due to his utter hatred of Carlos Mencia.
What about Mitch Hedberg? He toured with Dave Attel and Lewis Black when Black was pretty big and Attel was going crazy with his Insomniac show. Hedberg was already sort of well-known from spots on talk shows but he absolutely killed the audience when I saw him. There was a huge outpouring of grief when he died shortly thereafter.