In 2007, Fox News decided to try something different. Comedy.
As Steve Martin famously put it, comedy is not pretty. As Fox News found out, their core audience doesn't want a clone of Saturday Night Live's long-running Weekend Update segment or Comedy Central's Daily Show.
The 1/2 Hour News Hour lasted 7 months, airing around 10 pm or later, and, bear in mind, this was a show that the Fox network itself rejected. The series' creative pedigree belongs to Joel Surnow (24), who was experimenting with comedy for the first time.
If this show were on today, a certain demagogue would be watching or DVR'ing it as much as possible, since it would be reconfigured to fit Fox News' current agenda.
Former Weekend Update anchor Dennis Miller and radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh were among the sketch contributors, both likely wishing they could remove this from their resumes.
Following is a compilation of clips:
As the E-trade baby once put it, ever so succinctly, this is weak, man. Yeah, real weak. The laughs feel forced, and that ain't good.
No rating.
Wow, I've never heard of this show. It must've dropped off the radar pretty quickly.
ReplyDeleteBroadcast networks don't seem to have much luck with parody newscasts outside of Weekend Update. Years prior, NBC tried--and failed--with their own answer to HBO's Not Necessarily the News called The News is The News, with one of the regular 'reporters' being actor Simon Jones, who played Arthur Dent on the BBC TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Speaking of British TV, Not Necessarily the News was itself based on a British news satire called Not the Nine O' Clock News.
Fox Noise is a right-wing propaganda machine disguised a news network. It's like watching The Onion only for real. Watching Fox Noise already feels like watching a parody newscast. That's probably why this didn't work; How could anyone tell when the "real" news ended and the fake news began?
ReplyDeleteForgot to mention: Lynn Thigpen (known to PBS kid-vid viewers as Red Green on "The Write Channel" and the Chief on the PBS game show version of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?") was another News is the News regular.
ReplyDeleteNews satires began in England with That Was The Week That Was back in the 60's, and that introduced the world to some fella named David Frost, who later became a talk show host here in the US.
ReplyDeleteNBC tried a 1-off, Our Planet Tonight, from the producers of Airplane! & Police Squad!, and while that was a trip (only because of a certain MTV honey from the 518, Martha Quinn), it didn't register with viewers, either.
If Fox Shmooze tried this now, President Pampers would love it, and he wouldn't know the difference....