Last Comic Standing 3, Episode 8: The Finale NBC Ruined

As most fans probably know by now, NBC dropped the ball with LCS3 when they decided not to air the finale of the series on the network after seven weeks of episodes. If you've missed our earlier articles about the entire situation, you can catch up on most of it with our previous article (including how to contact NBC to complain) here.

The main concern of NBC was that one of the handful of shows they were gambling to help them with ratings, Father of the Pride, had been only doing so-so in the ratings. So they decided to can the finale of LCS3 for a three episode "marathon" of FotP. The event featured two repeat episodes between 8:00 - 9:00 pm and then a new episode of the series at 9:00 pm. In doing so, NBC hoped to raise FotP and their Tuesday night ratings beyond what they had achieved with LCS3 as the lead-in.

So how did the gamble pay off? As we predicted here last time, pretty poorly. While LCS3 had not done as well as the previous season, it was still typically earning a 4.0 in the ratings. The last episode of LCS3 shown on October 5 started with a 4.0 in the first half hour and gained viewers in the second half hour to end with a 4.2 and a 7 share.

The two repeat episodes of FotP on October 12 - which NBC predicted would do much better than LCS3 - also began with a 4.0 in the ratings. It then LOST viewers in the second half-hour and ended with a 3.8 and a 6 share.

As to the new episode at 9:00 pm, FotP got a 5.2 - the LOWEST rating the series has earned so far, and a further indicator of the downward slope FotP has fallen into since the respectable (if not amazing) premiere rating.

Meanwhile, our sources tell us that NBC is receiving over 1,000 complaints A DAY about the cancellation of the LCS3 finale and the poor job they did in announcing the winner before the finale even aired.

In other words, NBC gambled and lost. I would suspect that there's probably an executive somewhere at NBC that is probably sweating bullets right now as to how secure their future is with the company. {Note from Mike: That depends on who he knows. If he's a pal of FotP-guru Katzenberg, he's probably up for a promotion about now…}

And as for LCS? There is still talk that a fourth season of the show is pretty much set to happen, so all this ineptitude on NBC's part may have actually helped the series make a comeback for another season. Whether that fourth season will end up on NBC, Comedy Central, or even somewhere else remains to be seen, however.

As to other news about the show popping up: VH1 ran a special about reality shows, Reality TV Secrets 2, this past week and a brief mention was made of the whole Paris controversy from back at the beginning of the year for LCS2. In bringing up the story again, the program did a very poor job in presenting the facts behind the story, still going with the proven false "anti-Barry Katz" propaganda about the show and talking with no one associated with the show or witnessed to the events that occurred. While the story is certainly one to discuss on such a program, since the people who produce the show did such a poor job in discussing the facts behind the case, it became a meaningless excursion.

On a more personal note, my wife Jill and I went to see John Heffron and Tammy Pescatelli in-concert on October 16 at the Brown Theatre in Louisville, Kentucky. The theater was nearly sold-out and it was obvious that many people there had come based on having seen the comics on LCS. Pescatelli worked for a good 45 minutes and Heffron for a little over an hour and it was clear that the audience loved them.

One surprising aspect of the program was hearing John Heffron now using his experience on LCS as part of his act. Well, that alone wasn't very surprising; it was what he had to say that was. In the course of the evening, Heffron went into a bit about his run-in with Ralphie May on May's comments about comedians who do "remember when you were a kid" material. Heffron also went into a short piece about the altercation between Gary Gulman and Jay Mohr at a LCS3 rehearsal discussed in the National Enquirer recently (where, from what has been said, Gulman got angry with Mohr and threw him up against a wall).

I'll leave it to fans to go see Heffron in-concert to hear his side of these stories, but it made for a very interesting evening for LCS fans. I had heard of other people attending his shows before October 16, but no one had mentioned him using such material before, and since he was appearing AFTER the finale of LCS3 aired, I do have to wonder if he was waiting until the show was officially over before making it part of his set. Heck, he even said beforehand, "LCS is over now, so I don't care any more." If anyone has any other details about this, I would like to hear from them.