The FOX News Channel has introduced a slew of new programs over the past few weeks, including the late night talk show, Red Eye, and the blog review series It's Out There. But The 1/2 Hour News Hour, a Daily Show-style news satire produced by 24's Joel Surnow, has gotten the most media attention by far. The pilot episode was shown this past Sunday night at 10:00 Eastern, its regular time slot, and it featured five things that made me laugh:
1. Ann Coulter, introduced as "President" Rush Limbaugh's second-in-command, made fun of her infamous "convert them to Christianity" line.
2. Iran denied that its Holocaust denial conference ever happened, and added that even if it did, the number of people involved was grossly exaggerated.
3. Revelations that Barack Obama used cocaine dropped his approval rating among Democrats to 99 percent.
4-5. A guy selling Che Guevara T-shirts also had shirts featuring Idi Amin ("People: The Other White Meat") and Kim Jong-Il ("No Fat Chicks").
As for the rest of it, well... you know you're in trouble when the running gag is about Ed Begley, Jr. Who will be the target of such cutting satire next week? Sean Young?
Aside from the whole not-being-funny thing, the main problem with The 1/2 Hour News Hour is that it aims its satirical guns at Democrats and liberals—never Republicans and conservatives. By contrast, the left-leaning satirists at The Daily Show and Canada's This Hour Has 22 Minutes will sometimes make fun of people who share their politics—and do it better. (Compare 1/2 Hour's lame ACLU parody ads with this story from the decidedly leftist Onion.) The 1/2 Hour News Hour appears to tie itself into an ideological straitjacket.
I also hoped The 1/2 Hour News Hour would poke fun at its own network's hyperbolic spin on the news, with garish graphics, bombastic music and sound effects, but the show's look is really quite understated. FOX-haters will undoubtedly be amused by the fact that its satirical show looks more like a "real" news channel than regular FOX News programming. (Except for the most fake-sounding studio audience in television history, that is. There may be people at the taping, but that doesn't mean the producers aren't using canned laughter—it's been done during particularly bad episodes of Saturday Night Live, too.)
There are plenty of very funny conservative bloggers out there. Maybe FOX News should offer them some writing jobs.
Article comments
1 - Aaron Fleming
The show is embarrassingly unfunny, I doubt even regular conservative viewers of Fox News would find it amusing. A very lame attempt to tackle The Daily Show. And anyway, The O'Reilly Report is a thousand times more hilarious!
2 - J.J. Hunsecker
"There are plenty of very funny conservative bloggers out there."
Feel free to link to one that actually is.
3 - sonja
JEALOUS MUCH?
wacky, extreme conservatives are always whining that "the Daily Show" has some kind of magical, undue influence on people, and they're so obviously jealous, because THEY wish they could magically and unduely influence people. (Slow down and make a reasonable argument, that might be the first step to influencing the public). But Jon and the guys at TDS, they're a comedy show first and foremost and any influence they have is unintentional...and I'm guessing it's utterly hilarious to them that they're even accused of having influence.
NEWSFLASH TO FOX people watch TDS because their commentary is well thought out, well researched, and well reasoned. The answer is not more reactionary blabber, but in the form of a comedy show, the answer is make your REAL news shows more thought out, researched and well reasoned, but supportive of your conservative point of view. Jon Stewart himself has been begging you to do this for years.