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.
... View MoreFirst 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.
... View MoreI thought this was beyond awful. There are some truly(intentionally) funny Cons out there, but none are associated with this show. I mean Dennis Miller, a frequent FauxNewsChannel guest was amazing on SNL's Weekend Update.While I didn't expect him to appear on the show, it seems like he would have been a far better choice to develop/create/ consult on a show of this nature that a wrong wing idealogical hack, who is responsible for 24, the show which glorifies torture, & the propaganda piece on 9/11 that aired on ABC last year. Penn, of Penn &Teller, is also a Con(Libertarian, actually).HE could have consulted on this & added real humor, even if it was skewed to the wrong side.Colin Quinn, also an SNL Weekend Update alum, is also a Con(if you saw his show that ran on Comedy Central, you;d know this). Danny Bonaduce showed his Con side in his ad libs on his recent GSN show.Even Rupert Murdock is funny. ANYONE with even an ounce of humor would have made this work,even to a devout Liberal, such as myself, if only it thought about what was really funny. I laugh at Miller & Quinn all the time, despite the fact that I disagree with nearly everything they say. I do so because they are actually funny, unlike this show. Duchess
... View MoreWhen I saw the advertisement for this on the FNC, I thought it was kinda funny. This show might offend the following:Illiegal Aliens Space Aliens Liberals People that voted for LiberalsThat was kinda funny. Sadly, the show only goes so far beyond that. The episode I'm watching right now had Rush Limbaugh as the president and Ann Coulter as the VP. They weren't born to be funny. They tried too hard to be funny. And they weren't that funny. The actual show is a little better. The anchors are merely OK. The material is that of Weekend Update, and the classic SNL skit is ten times as better. But, truth be told, there is a little treasure to be found in the trash. Some of the stuff is actually quite funny. When I say it was a rip off of Weekend Update, and it is, it almost duplicates it, and the humor in it too. Yeah, sometimes I look at it and say "That's not funny" but other times I laugh out loud. The laugh track certainly doesn't help, however. It sounds like there isn't a live audience, because the people laugh with the same volume at every single joke, which doesn't happen in sitcoms, where there is an actual live audience. This show might go for a few more seasons. The writers aren't bad, but The 1/2 Hour News Hour (clever title by the way) is still a ways away from being anything worth watching more than a few times.
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