Marcus, Utah's very own one-named and many-tattooed stand-up comedian, will find out tonight - along with the rest of America - whether he will be the "Last Comic Standing" on NBC's reality-competition show.

If Marcus prevails over his four remaining competitors, he wins $250,000 and a talent contract with NBC. But no matter what, as the Tribune's David Burger wrote today, he will be part of the "Last Comic Standing" tour this fall - and he will perform at his home grounds, Wiseguys in Ogden and West Valley, this weekend.

Marcus also got the royal treatment in this week's City Weekly (which hit newsstands late Wednesday) - a cover story by the alt-weekly's TV writer Bill Frost. In the profile, Frost again lamented how Utah's mainstream media has ignored the homegrown talent:

Too bad about the local-media blackout conspiracy against Marcus, huh?

OK, that might be an overstatement—but compared to the months-long (and still going!) Utah media orgasm over "American Idol’s" David Archuleta, the cute Mormon teen from Murray who eventually took the silver, Marcus might as well be competing on the Food Network. No, wait: Kelsey Nixon got more coverage, too. Aside from some radio and City Weekly’s print and blog reports about Marcus’ progress on a major network reality show, the Salt Lake City media has virtually ignored one of its own.

OK, let's do a tally of the City Weekly's coverage of Marcus: Frost mentioned Marcus in his "True TV" column on May 29 and July 3, and the "Lake Effect" feature, also on May 29 - as well as in three blog posts - but this is the alt-weekly's first full-fledged interview with the guy. Frost has repeated the "media blackout" line, or some variation of it, nearly every time.

Meanwhile, the Tribune's Burger has interviewed Marcus twice, and written two blog posts about him, here and here. I've mentioned Marcus in this blog five times (OK, now it's six). The Deseret News' TV critic Scott D. Pierce wrote on Monday that he's rooting for Marcus to win, even though Pierce doesn't like the show much. And KSL - the station that carries "Last Comic Standing" - has done stories on Marcus twice, on July 3 and July 31.

As media conspiracies go, this one isn't going too well.

Labels: Marcus, Reality show