Fox News to Launch Conservative ‘Daily Show’ Clone
Seeing the success of Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report,” Fox News is working on a conservative news satire show.
Fox News Channel might air two episodes of a “Daily Show”-like program with a decidedly nonliberal bent on Saturday nights in late January, with the possibility that it could become a weekly show for the channel.
The half-hour show is executive produced by “24’s” Joel Surnow and Manny Cota and creator Ned Rice, who previously wrote for “Politically Incorrect” and “Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson” through This Just In Prods. It would take aim at what Surnow calls “the sacred cows of the left” that don’t get made as much fun of by other comedy shows. “It’s a satirical news format that would play more to the Fox News audience than the Michael Moore channel,” Surnow said. “It would tip more right as ‘The Daily Show’ tips left.”
There would certainly be an audience for such a show but the description here does not look promising. For one thing, a once-a-week format is unlikely to work. There are already a flurry of late-night comedians doing their takes on the events of the day, not to mention “Saturday Night Live” and other weekly venues. Immediacy is part of the effectiveness of these shows. Further, it’s not just the format that has done so well for Comedy Central but the hosts. Unless they find someone with the comedic timing and ability to be simultaneously likable and snarky that Stewart and Colbert possess, the show won’t make it.
It’s a tall order, but worth a try. Who watches SNL anymore, anyway?
Didn’t Dennis Miller already fail at this?
Fox News Imitating Comedy Central::Comedy Central as Air America::Fox News.
Doomed to failure before preproduction starts.
BTW: What sacred cows of the left do Stewart/Colbert et al fail to go after? Colbert was unsatirically hostile to Amy Goodman when she appeared on his show…
I’m skeptical that this will work. Clone’s tend to have problems when their original is still alive.
If they passed the magic wand of program selection to me, I would say go for a “point-counter point” short segment that could be filled into other shows. For those of you who don’t remember what I am talking about, does the phrase “Jane you ignorant slut” ring any bells. The two sides would provide caricatures of the right and left bringing up their arguments on any given issue. If you just had to have a 30 minute show, make it a send off on the Sunday morning talk shows, rather than another satirical news broadcast.
also hatred and oppression and greed which are the mainstay of republican actions are just not funny when sold in a pr format.
A fake news show on Fox? This is a new idea?
“Ba-da-bum”
Brilliant, Tano!
Brilliant, Tano!
Seconded.
What they should do, really, is pay The Daily Show to come over to Fox. It’s not like Murdoch’s principles have ever gotten in the way of a buck before.
Fox’s best bet might be Dennis Miller who used to do the fake news on Saturday Night Live and already works for Fox.
Not exactly a fresh face, though, and not likely to threaten the Daily Show’s dominance of the fake news market.
The biggest problem I see with this idea is that one has to be very clever and witty to pull off this brand of comedy.
Ann Coulter’s stuff comes close here, but her approach just comes off mean and insulting – not cleverly sarcastic. She just isn’t smart enough.
And that is the root problem with this idea. People who *are* smart enough to pull it off will automatically turn off the political Rights’ core constituency. If by some miracle it turns out to be funny, nobody will watch because the people who “get it” will disagree with the bias!
Indeed, Tony. Perhaps they should just hire Larry the Cable Guy or Michael Richards [/snark].
It’d be pretty hard to parody the puerile childishness of the left. Maybe Larry the Liberal could try TV?
Just play tapes of the three Bush White House press secretaries and let the Mystery Science Theater robots comment from the margins. You’d have enough laughs for a lifetime.
Failing that, give me 24 hours of Ken Adelman worming his way out responsibility for anything.
Tom and Crow vs. Bush? I would totally watch every episode of that.
Wow…..more “Michael Moore is fat” jokes. Yeah, have fun with that, Fox News.
HI-LARIOUS!!! Conservatives are inherently stupid and unfunny. Perhaps the show will be unintentionally funny…the Horatio Cane of late night satire?
It would be awesome if people tuned in just to make fun of it. The Fox folks wouldn’t know the diff…or wouldn’t care.