The ½ Hour News Hour

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.

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.

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 assuming that this is the debut episode of The Half Hour News hour, airing at 10 PM on Sunday, February 18th and it is awful. The "comedians" hosting it are to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert what Colt 45 is to Dom Perignon. The jokes, if you want to call them that, are all followed by a terrible laugh track that would embarrass the worst of the 1980s sitcoms. It really isn't an issue for me that its slanted so far right, but it also seems to be slanted towards idiots who laugh at anything, or those who are partially lobotomized. The jokes are terribly unfunny, and if they put this up against Colbert or Stewart, I don't see it lasting that long. Comedy Central's newsy-ish shows may be tilted slightly to the left, but they do make fun of everyone, not just liberals, Democrats, the ACLU, and revolutionary historical figures. Avoid this show if you can, but I don't think you'll have to worry for long anyway. You might like this show if you meet two out of three of the following: 1. You dislike homosexuals. 2. You believe that global warming is hoax made up by liberal elitist "so-called" scientist. 3. You're still holding out for those WMDs in Iraq.

This show is so awfully amateurish it is agonizingly uncomfortable to watch. What's worse is the overzealous audience who hoot and holler at jokes that are more ideologically pointed than funny. The director compounds this forced laughter and applause during the shows credits when the audience tries applaud and cheer for 2-3 minutes.

I feel sorry for the "actors." I know I have seen a couple in other shows on Comedy Central and in TV commercials. They are really hitting rock bottom with this turkey. The worst example of this is Dennnis Miller, whose rapid-fire, arcane references are so beyond the ken of the audience that the timing of their laughter is not in sync with his not-so-funny and very bitter punch lines. What is it with conservativism and comedy? Miller used to be a hoot when his observations weren't such blatant attempts to attack one side of the political spectrum.

Like Miller, the conservatives who write for this show are so consumed with trying to score political points against the left that they miss being funny by a long shot. One skit had "God" smiting secular humanist authors (to quote O'Reilly) and the audience not only laughed but cheered as each met their fate. Now who wouldn't find that funny? Good Christian humor, huh? I suppose the kool-aid drinking Fox News die-hards will force themselves to laugh and keep watching but it won't last long. I've watched three episodes and even on a good night this show is worse than a high school comedy routine.

As Lewis Black observed, "If this is supposed to be a 'fake' news show on Fox News, shouldn't it be a real news show?"

To those faithful acolytes of all things Fox, keep trying to laugh while you cringe inside.