No joke, Algonquin College television broadcasting students have been nominated for a prestigious Canadian Comedy Award.

The veteran comedy troop, Crush Improv, performed its 10th Anniversary Special in early December at The Gladstone Theatre in Ottawa. The five-hour show was shot and livestreamed by 22 Algonquin students taking the Remote Broadcasting course in the College’s Broadcasting -Television program.

That broadcast and those involved in it, including the students and the show’s cast, were recently nominated in the Best Taped Live Performance category for the Canadian Comedy Awards. They are competing against a CBC special and three Just for Laughs' specials.

“I was thrilled to hear this,” said Professor David Grigg, who teaches the Remote Broadcasting course. “We had a great evening of Improv, and now we have this. The nomination says a lot about our students and the quality of their work.”

The students set up a six-camera mobile studio at the theatre, handling the “mechanics” of the show -- everything from producing and directing to the camera work, audio, and graphic elements.

The winning production is to be decided through public voting. Anyone can vote. This involves visiting https://www.canadiancomedyawards.org, creating a password, logging in to the webpage, and casting a ballot.

Links to video clips showing the nominees provides a glimpse at the work last year of Canada’s funniest people. Voting closes on May 20 at 11:59 p.m. EST.

Snippets of Crush Improv’s Dec. 9 performance can be seen here.  

Al Connors, a Crush Improv founder who submitted the performance for the award competition, expressed his gratitude to the Algonquin students. “Crush wouldn’t have been eligible for this category if it wasn’t for all the work you (the students) did shooting and broadcasting it.”

“The whole production is nominated, not just the (13-member) cast,” he noted. “Everyone who worked on that show is nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award.”

Crush Improv’s competition includes a CBC Ron James Special and three Just for Laughs shows.

This isn’t the first award for which students in the Remote Broadcast course have competed. For the last two years they’ve been voted the Best in Canada for Remote Broadcasts by the Broadcast Educators Association of Canada.  

Those two awards were for livestreams of Algonquin College Thunder Volleyball and Basketball games which have become a staple of the Remote Broadcast program.

All Remotes are livestreamed and have included for the last six years the Canadian Improv Games, the European Union Christmas Concert from Notre Dame Basilica, the Canada East Short Track Speed Skating Championships, the Canadian Interprovincial Equestrian Championships, and the CTV Timmins Christmas Telethon.