Hall of Shame Moment: No Humor in NBC’s Handling of 'Last Comic Standing' Finale

Recently I was catching up on old episodes of Laugh-In thanks to the cable channel Trio airing them. Some of the readers may not be familiar with the show at all, but it was a vastly popular comedy show of the late 1960s that aired on NBC. It was also known for having political and ethical slants that were very courageous (some would say outrageous) for its days.

One just element of Laugh-In was an occasional segment called “The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award.” This was a segment where the hosts, Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, would present an award to a real politician, company, or other individuals that had done something so preposterously stupid and wasteful that they really deserve to get “a Finger” on national television.

I’m reminded of this NBC series and the “Flying Fickle Finger of Fate” as I watched the merry-go-round paces NBC put the finale of Last Comic Standing 3 through over the past week and a half. In the honor of days gone by when NBC seemed to care about their comedy programming, I would like to bring back the FFFF award one last time for a presentation. (With dedication to the spirit of Dan Rowan – one of the greatest straight-men ever – and the still-active Dick Martin.)

MUSIC FANFARE

INT. BARE STAGE WITH HANGING SIGN IN BACKGROUND THAT SPELLS OUT “FLYING FICKLE FINGER OF FATE AWARD”

DAN enters from stage-left, as DICK enters from stage-right. DICK is holding the FFFF Award, while DAN has his ever-present cigarette in his hand.

DAN: Well, here we are once again.

DICK: Yes, it has been a while. What brings us together again, Don?

DAN: Well, Dirk, uh, Dick, we’ve been ask to present the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate award to a prestigious national corporation who out-did themselves recently in their field of excellence.

DICK: Who is it? Chrysler? Nabisco? General Electric?

DAN: You were close with that last one, Dick, as this award goes to the company which is owned by General Electric – NBC.

DICK: You don’t say?

DAN: Yes, I do say, he quipped.

DICK: But what did our mother company do to deserve such an award?

DAN: It all comes down to NBC’s muddling the outcome of Last Comic Standing 3.

DICK: I’ve heard of the show, but I’ve been too busy with my nightly rounds.

DAN: Your nightly rounds? I thought you spent your nights picking up women.

DICK: Believe me, if you saw how fast I go through those women you would think of it as my --

DAN & DICK: -- nightly rounds.

DICK: Yeah.

DAN: I don’t want to hear about it, Dick. Besides we still have an award to hand out.

DICK: Well, let’s get cracking. I’ve got my duties to fulfill tonight!

DAN: As I was saying, NBC muddled the ending of Last Comic Standing 3 by canceling the series before it was over.

DICK: What’s so wrong about that? Lots of series get cancelled. We did.

DAN: Yes, but most series don’t get cancelled with only one week left in an eight-week commitment by the network.

DICK: That is kind of sad, but what’s the big deal?

DAN: The big deal is that the episode before the cancellation asked home viewers to pick a winner of the stand-up comedy competition staged during the first seven weeks of the show. Then, less than a week before the final episode that gave viewers the results of the voting was to air, NBC cancelled the show.

DICK: Hmm. That would probably upset a lot of home-viewers, but I’m sure NBC had a legitimate reason for doing so.

DAN: That’s true and it all had to do with a little show called Father of the Pride.

DICK: With a clever name like that, I can’t see how it could go wrong.

DAN: Unfortunately, wrong it went. NBC had banked a lot of money on Father of the Pride and hoped that it would be a Nielsen Ratings replacement for departing shows like Friends and Frasier. But the ratings for the program slipped each week until it had reached 5.3 during the week of October 5.

DICK: That certainly doesn’t sound like a ratings’ winner, but what does that have to do with Last Comic Standing 3?

DAN: Everything, it appears. You see, Last Comic Standing was programmed to be the lead-in for Father of the Pride on Tuesday nights. In fact, NBC was so desperate to have the show as a lead-in that they jumped the gun and asked the creators of Last Comic Standing to do a quickie third season with only a few weeks preparation.

DICK: Boy, I love those quickies.

DAN: This quickie wasn’t like the kind we do on our show, Dick…

DICK: It wasn’t fun for them?

DAN: That’s putting it mildly. This quickie was a situation where the creators had to throw together a show to premiere just three weeks after the ending of the previous season, forcing them to burn out the comics, the producers, and the viewers alike with too much too soon.

DICK: Well, when you put it that way, no wonder their ratings were bad.

DAN: That’s the irony of the situation, Dick. Last Comic Standing 3 may have not had the ratings they were used to in the summer months, but Tuesday at 8:00 has always been a troubled time-period for NBC so they should have known that ratings – especially against a show like CBS’ Big Brother – would not be terribly high. Still, Last Comic Standing consistently did above a 4.0 during that time-period.