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Fox News launches pilot right wing 'Daily Show'

By Lee - Feb 14th, 2007 at 7:11 pm EST

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Tags: Comedy, Daily Show, Joel Surnow, The 1/2 Hour News Hour

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We knew it was coming. Throughout last year, there were various reports that Fox News had an interest in promoting a conservative version of the Daily Show. Last June, MediaBistro.com blogged that conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham was rumored to be hosting the pilot. The tipster revealing the secret pilot described it as a "terrible rip off the Daily Show" and that the "writers and producers should be embarrassed to show this one to Roger [Ailes]."

While Daily Show host Jon Stewart is famous for single handily destroying CNN's Crossfire by denouncing hosts Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson as partisan hacks who do a disservice to the political discourse in America, Ingraham might be better known for asking listeners to her radio show to jam the phone lines of the Democratic voter assistance hotline on election day in 2006. A Fox News regular and sometimes guest host for 'pa-pa bear' Bill O'Reilly, Ingraham seemed the perfect fit for this sort of thing, I suppose.

Anyways, she's not it. The producer of the network series '24' (also known as fear mongering crap TV) Joel Surnow is in charge of producing this new show called The 1/2 Hour News Hour. The Drudgereport is already loyally creating a buzz for the show, posting a news article and a 'leaked' youtube clip. Here's the lowdown so far:

FNC is testing the concept on Sunday nights. The first episode will air at 10 p.m. Sunday and repeat the following Sunday. The second episode will air at the same time March 4.
The show, which stars comedians Kurt Long and Jenn Robertson, owes quite a bit to "Saturday Night Live" segment "Weekend Update" in both format and spirit. The "newscasters" will take a story of the day and then spin it to a comedic extreme.

To me, it seems more like the unintelligent humor of MAD-TV. If you've already watched the youtube clip, you can imagine how bad this is going to be. The laughtrack alone is enough to make even the most dedicated wingnut want to immediately flip the channel. Future segments will include a parody of Che Guevara t-shirts, instead with Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong. Super witty, huh?

The claim that conservatives have not yet branched into political satire simply is not true. Movie producer David Zucker has tried his hand at political satires for the Republican Party. Check them out here, or here. South Park often has a fairly conservative, albeit libertarian, message. Dennis Miller gets his 2-cents on everything on Hannity and Colmes. Millions and millions of Americans, for some reason, tune into Rush Limbaugh (a friend of Surnow) and Glenn Beck to hear their feeble attempts at humor (which usually comprises imitating Ted Kennedy's voice or smearing gays and women).

They can emulate the style of the Daily Show, but I am positive they will never be able to recreate the sheer humor and creativity of one of the best television shows of all time. And let's face it- The 1/2 Hour News Hour will probably suffer zero ratings and a quick death anyways.

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zing

By Lee Feb 14th 2007 at 10:41 pm EST

producer of 24? now he knows something about torture!

ha..ha...

Oh, man.

By Superduperficial Feb 14th 2007 at 10:51 pm EST

I wanted to like this concept, I really did. Not because it's conservative, but just because more people should be exposed to smart political humor.

"Gratingly awful" doesn't even begin to describe that YouTube clip. It's an utter abomination.

And yes, my god, that laugh track! @*#&@*$*

If we really must have humor divided by ideology, can we get a Hannity and Colmes show with Jon Stewart and Dennis Miller? Link

A lower common denominator

By niral Feb 15th 2007 at 10:58 am EST

dennis miller's cnbc show got canceled. because even though he's witty, it tends to drown out in the mass of thoroughly obscure 50s tv references he likes to use.
I'm sure it will be a thoroughly awful show, but who knows...TV keeps lowering the bar, and yet people keep watching.

nice try

By Michael Feb 15th 2007 at 6:41 pm EST

This will never work for FoxNews, and possibly not for conservatives in general, in this era. They might feel constantly embattled by the Daily Show, but they misunderstand and underestimate the comedy as merely a partisan weapon. Yes, Jon Stewart's show betrays a liberal sense of things, but what they fail to see is that HE'S MAKING FUN OF THE WHOLE WORLD. The media, politics, the way we all see things, etc. To this many conservatives will surely reply that he makes fun of their party more than any other target. This neglects the fact that it's A COMEDY SHOW, on a COMEDY NETWORK. As Jon Stewart himself used say whenever someone tried to characterize his show as having an explicit political agenda, "My lead-in show is puppets making crank calls!" However, that is what is genius about its format; it IS protest, masquerading as comedy. I mean social protest in the most general sense; it points out the sheer perposterousness of the world today and then cries out in angst. On occasion, the world becomes too much to bear and we fall back on Irony (enter Stephen Colbert, and his committed embodiment of a very specific kind of preposterousness). Many conservatives, by trading in phrases like "they hate us for our freedom" and "the homosexual agenda," and forwarding ideas that go against basic science, clearly have no capacity for irony, which depends on a firm grounding in reality (however, clearly they do end up providing ample fodder for irony's comedic manifestations). Comedy has always been about finding the truth--the uncomfortable, unmentionable truth. These days, it may be the only (or best) way to address how ridiculous the state of our nation has become. Look at what a vicious attack Colbert managed at the Press Corps banquet. But you always need the stage--the performance of it. A comedy show on FoxNews breaks that illusion of the stage and places the show firmly in a partisan context. The agenda is explicit; it's the purpose of the show. What's interesting is that while Stewart plays a regular guy laughing at the world, the players on that YouTube clip seem actually more artificial, come off more like performers. Their approach comes off hokey and dated; they're striving for comedy on a news analysis channel while the Daily show comes up with news analysis on a comedy channel.

The difference is simple: these guys point out that Barack Obama's initials are "B.O." (tee hee), while Jon Stewart takes a shot every time George Bush says the word "terror" in the State of the Union.

Which joke is smarter, funnier, more poignant, and comes from a show that will last more than 3 weeks?

Ratings exceeded expecatations

By Jason Feb 21st 2007 at 1:51 pm EST

The comment that this show would probably score zero ratings is hilarious now that the ratings have come in. Over a million viewers watched the 1/2 hour news hour. Numbers comparable to the Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

With little to no major advertising, the pilot shows a lot of promise.

The usual suspects will attack this program as "not funny", and "boring", and mostly you'll find that those critics are liberals.

For a pilot, I thought the show was well done.

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