From a Washington Post column by Richard Zoglin headlined “The heroes who built New York’s comedy scene and changed America”:

Bad news often comes in threes, even in the world of comedy. The death on Feb. 20 of Rick Newman, the founder of New York City’s landmark comedy club Catch a Rising Star, at age 81, came only a day after the passing of the club’s longtime emcee (and Newman’s close friend), Richard Belzer, at 78. And that was three months after Budd Friedman, owner of New York’s other big comedy club of the 1970s, the Improv, died at age 90.