A House Full of Stand-Up Comics

Take my one-liner.

Please.

NBC devoted an hour Thursday night to celebrating the 20th birthday of the Comedy Store, Hollywood’s famed nightclub on the Sunset Strip featuring stand-up comics.

The timing was perfect, for television has become its own Comedy Store, a place where former or present stand-up comedians now have starring roles in at least 11 prime-time sitcoms.

To say nothing of the proliferation of comics as talk-show hosts (Jay Leno, Arsenio Hall, David Letterman, Jenny Jones and Whoopi Goldberg are some) and weathercasters (Fritz Coleman and Christopher Nance on KNBC-TV Channel 4).

And don’t forget the comics who headline HBO and Showtime specials or appear on the Arts & Entertainment network series “An Evening at the Improv,” the Fox series “Comedy Strip Live” and MTV’s “Half-Hour Comedy Hour.”

Stand-up comedy has been a sitcom prep school for years. Bill Cosby--whose present hosting of the syndicated game show “You Bet Your Life” follows his long run on “The Cosby Show”--got his start as a stand-up comedian, for example. So did Don Adams (“Get Smart”), Redd Foxx (“Sanford and Son”), Freddie Prinze (“Chico and the Man”), Gabe Kaplan (“Welcome Back, Kotter”), Jimmie Walker (“Good Times”) and other TV golden oldies. But the trend has now greatly accelerated.

Thus, it was no accident that Fox’s recent Emmy telecast gratingly sounded at times like a Battle of the Network Comics, with hosts and presenters setting a record for comedy monologues in an awards program.

Moreover, it’s no accident that sitcoms in recent years generally have become less situation-driven and--tailoring themselves to their talent--more punch-line-oriented.

Although Cosby first starred in a TV comedy in 1971, the senior member of prime-time’s present comic corps (going back 20 years) is Bob Newhart, whose new CBS series, “Bob,” is his third sitcom, following a huge career as a stand-up comic in the 1960s. Although often funny, Newhart’s sitcom characters, instead of breaking ground, have been virtual extensions of his stand-up comedy.

With the possible exception of Cosby, Roseanne Arnold is TV’s most famous and successful stand-up alum now that Johnny Carson has departed. It was her success as a club and concert comic that earned her “Roseanne.” But being a comic instead of a trained actress did not limit her vision for a series that has grown enormously, to the point that it now beats any other show on TV in giving a fairly accurate depiction of working-class America.

A bit lower on the creative ladder, meanwhile, comic Bob Saget stars in two series on ABC, the sitcom “Full House” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” on which he functions as a sort of babbling monologist-host.

The Battle of the Wednesday Night Comics pits ABC’s “Home Improvement” star Tim Allen--whose second-season hit sitcom is a spinoff of his handyman stand-up routines--against NBC’s Jerry Seinfeld, a club comic who plays a club comic in “Seinfeld,” even beginning and ending each episode with a chunk of monologue supposedly performed in front of an audience: “Don’t you hate ‘To Be Continued’ on TV?”

This season, Seinfeld’s TV character is going cosmic, negotiating with NBC for his own series--a sitcom.

Five new comedies--headed by “The Larry Sanders Show,” HBO’s hilarious talk-show spoof starring Garry Shandling--have stars with stand-up pedigrees. ABC has hung “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper” on the shoulders of stand-up comic Mark Curry. Fox’s Mr. Thursday Night is comedian Martin Lawrence, star of “Martin.” Former comic Paul Reiser co-stars in NBC’s “Mad About You.” And elements of Roger Kabler’s impression-driven comedy act surface on NBC’s “Rhythm & Blues” in a way that is reminiscent of Robin Williams, a stand-up alumnus whose stint as the lovable alien Mork preceded his growth into entertainment iconhood.

What does it all mean? To be continued. . . .

TAKE THIS NEWSCAST. Pretty please.

If anything is funnier than the cream of TV’s sitcoms, it’s the 4 p.m. edition of the KNBC-TV Channel 4 news, in which reporters and other featured personalities now use the top of the newscast to do live stand-ups hyping their stories and features. It’s like a living index.

But wait. Pulses all across Los Angeles must have quickened Wednesday afternoon when Channel 4 shifted immediately from this time-consuming orgy of self-promotion to something that could not wait. It was what Channel 4 is famous for. Not old news, not stale news, but yet another . . .

“Breaking Story!”

What’s that . . . a shooting at a school in Sepulveda? Quickly now to “Capt.” Bob Pettee above the tragic scene in the Channel 4 chopper, L.A. below him, the clear blue sky behind him, the camera in front of him. The word from “Capt.” Bob? Actually, he reported, there was no evidence of a shooting. Not yet. But up there in the sky, “Capt.” Bob would keep watch.

Quickly now, back to those sit-down comics, anchors Linda Alvarez and John Beard, for a few items to pass the time while the story in Sepulveda was developing. Then quickly now, back to soaring “Capt.” Bob with the latest on the shooting that wasn’t.

“It was a false report,” he said.

“That’s the kind of news we like to hear,” said Alvarez. And the kind of news--a story about a story that wasn’t a story but could have been a story if there had been a story--that Channel 4 labors to bring you so often.

Live and exclusive.

Meanwhile, there were other areas of metropolitan Los Angeles where shootings had not occurred, but “Capt.” Bob was apparently unable to reach them before Channel 4 news went off the air.