The ½ Hour News Hour

Everything in this show is done on the cheap; the casting of two people who between them have no noticeable success in entertainment, the horrible writing, the campy laugh track, and the guest appearances. Regardless of if you are from the right, middle or left, funny is funny, and this is NOT FUNNY. A right wing comedy could work if the writers could write and the actors act, this show can do neither. BO Magazine? Ed Bagley Jr (has he been in anything in the last 10 years? he is the biggest liberal they could mock?) Condoms in New York (I gotcha condom right her pal?) It is a show of Right-Wing talking points masked with a laugh track. This does not make it funny. If you find this show funny, you may like other "greats" like Two and a Half Men, Yes Dear, and According to Jim. All of these are train wrecks, but none rise to the level of the 1/2 Hour News Hour.

Well the only good thing to say about this horrid show is that it will be certainly be short lived. The "jokes" are truly unlike anything I have ever seen on television before in that they have absolutely no bias towards humor. Also it makes you wonder how Fox News will be able to continue to claim to be fair and balanced after laying this egg. Unlike the Daily Show it was meant to mimic the HHNH makes no attempt at throwing jabs at both sides of the political spectrum. The show leans so far right it's a wonder it doesn't fall over (that was a bad joke, but it is far funnier than anything you'll see on the HHNH). On the other hand it should be fun to watch Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh continue to pretend that this stinker is funny.

I'm basing this after just two episodes, so it could get better. Actually, it'd almost be impossible for it to get worse. The premise *could* work. The country is polarized enough that, basically, a right-wing only show could develop a niche. But for that to work, I'd have to think it would need to be better than this.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure the two anchor format works for this type of show. The feel of it is trying to be a Jimmy Fallon/Tina Fey exchange from Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. Only, the exchanges were really forced. The set seems inappropriate for the show, looking much more like a local access news show than that of a national show. The laugh track takes even more away from the show, making it look even more like a local access show.

As I said, potentially this show could develop an audience and develop. However, based off the first two episodes, it has a lot of work to do. This success or failure of this show won't have as much to do with left/right, right/wrong, Republican/Democrat, but rather whether or not it simply becomes a better quality product.

First off, I don't really see the logic in placing this on Fox News to begin with. The Daily Show and Colbert Report are on Comedy Central, a network intended for humorous, entertaining broadcasts. Fox News is meant to be part of the news media. Stewart/Colbert comparisons aside, this show is poorly executed. Most of it isn't even funny. It's propaganda with a laugh track. Jabs at Rosie O'Donnel, Jack Murtha, and Nancy Pelosi are followed, not by an original joke, but by quotes of said figures and others followed by canned audience laughter. The show frequent attacks the ACLU viciously without so much as even a joke ANYWHERE in the segment. But for some reason, there is still laughter and applause following it. Without the laughter artificially inserted, this show would simply be Hannity's America. Oh, and did somebody say "OJ Simpson? He murders people!" Ha, this show is sooooo current in its comedy. Overall, it's a crying shame that this show is still on the air. It shouldn't matter what ideology a comedy show leans towards. What matters is funny writers, well-timed delivery, and a producer other than the one who does 24. 1/2 Hour News Hour is none of the above.

This show was canceled after 16 episodes, and rightfully so. After watching Fox News's answer to the "Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" for a few seconds, you instantly get the feeling that the show comes off as a little too....... fake.

Lets start with its production values, to be more specific, the laugh track. My god, it is an abomination of television. The show's content was not funny enough to film in front of a live studio audience, so they took the route of the midnight infomercial. The laugh track is the most comedic part of the show and the reason why I watched every episode, it fades in and out very fast and the volume of the laughter varies every joke.

Secondly, the "comedy" presented in the show and the message the producers were trying to get across never once strayed from conservatism. "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" have had success, largely due to the criticism of the political process as a whole, not just one side of the spectrum. The ways the "1/2 Hour News Hour" presented itself were not only extremely bias, but left its American viewers feeling more divided at the end of the day. Every show followed the same format, they attempted to make jokes about liberal people, organizations, and politics. They would then go on to have actors portray liberals as guests on the show, often dumb, drug users, "artsy", and Hollywood types. My biggest concern was, where were the real guests? The two Comedy Central Shows have them on every night, real guests, both liberal and conservative, with real answers to questions directed at them. Giving the other side a chance to answer is fair, and informative, and leaves viewers with a feeling that they actually just watched the news. Fox News, however, felt that it would be more effective to paint a picture of a liberal and argue with that instead, leaving the viewer with an eerie feeling as if you watching propaganda and knew it.

In the end, this show got what was coming to it. There are still talks about reworking it to have it back on the air, but regardless of whether it does or not, season 1 will go down in the history books as one of the bigger flops in cable television history.