Thursday, February 15, 2007

Faux News to Launch Their Answer to The Daily Show

Faux News wants to jump on the bandwagon of political humor shows -- with a distinctly wingnut angle, of course. Why not? If they can do it right, it could be funny. Somehow, I doubt they can pull it off, though.

Here is one view, from Salon:

Fox's answer to "The Daily Show"

"The 1/2 Hour News Hour" will apparently be Fox News Channel's long-awaited attempt to ape the success of "The Daily Show." But did they hire monkeys to write it?

Joel Surnow, "24" producer and Rush Limbaugh pal, is producing the show, which stars Kurt Long and Jenn Robertson and will go for a test spin the next two Sundays at 10 p.m. It's essentially a righty version of SNL's "Weekend Update." But there seem to be some obvious problems with that. First, "Weekend Update's" targets don't ever seem terribly agenda-driven: When they work (and admittedly, that's not that often ) it's because of the universality of the joke. "Weekend Update's" mildly amusing Barack Obama sketch worked because it snatched a controversy (one shaken by Salon's own Debra Dickerson) and poked at it in a hilarious way (much the way that Stephen Colbert had). Played out to its ludicrous extreme, all sides can get a yuk out of it, without any one side feeling assaulted. Success! But making fun of Obama for using drugs -- when he's admitted in a book and on "60 Minutes" to using coke as a kid -- is so cringingly ideological, you can practically hear Karl Rove slapping his knee in the background.

Speaking of which, are they actually going to use a live studio audience, or stick with these canned hams? Because there's nothing like a fraudience to make your whole knock-off show, which happens to spoof another show, really seem like ... well, you know. A fraud.

And here is a clip of the proposed show that focuses on Barack Obama:


Via: VideoSift

Mostly what I can see happening is the left getting its panties in a bunch because someone is making fun of it. They'll complain that there is already too much misinformation and satire coming from the right (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter).

Oh, but wait, those guys (and gal) don't know they are doing satire . . . or do they . . . .


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

mostly it suffers from a terminal case of the borings, and that laugh track is so, argh, conservative of liberal, not-funny is not-funny.

Erica

Unknown said...

Yeah, Faux is sure to be too focussed on sticking their knives in rather than being funny. And they are sure to be too meanspirited and have no humor about there own side of the political divide.

But it could still 'succeed,' by driving us liberals batty.