The ½ Hour News Hour

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(Redirected from
The 1/2 Hour News Hour
)
The ½ Hour News Hour
Starring
Country of originUnited States
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes17
Production
Running timeapprox. 26 minutes
Production company20th Television
Original release
NetworkFox News
ReleaseFebruary 18 (2007-02-18) –
September 23, 2007 (2007-09-23)

The ½ Hour News Hour is an American television news satire show that aired on Fox News. The program presented news stories from a conservative perspective, using a satirical format akin to Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and The Daily Show.

The first pilot aired on February 18, 2007, and the second on March 4, 2007. Fox News later purchased 13 more episodes of the show, which started airing on May 13, 2007. The show was subsequently cancelled, and the final episode aired on September 23, 2007.[1]

Cast and crew of the show included Kurt Long (playing co-anchor Kurt McNally), Jennifer Robertson (playing co-anchor Jennifer Lange), Manny Coto, and Ned Rice.[2] Longtime Weekend Update anchor Dennis Miller was a regular contributor to the program with his "The Buck Starts Here" segment.[3]

Background

Originally pitched as This Just In, the show was turned down by the

late-night division before being picked up by Fox News' chief Roger Ailes
for a trial run.

This was the first comedy show created by

Recurring sketches

Reception

The broadcast of the

pilot episode, which aired on Sunday, February 18, 2007, at 10 p.m., was watched by 1,478,000 viewers.[5] The rebroadcast of the same episode one week later was watched by 971,000 people.[6] The second episode on Sunday, March 4, received similar ratings with 1,384,000 viewers.[7]

Publications gave the show's initial two episodes historically poor reviews.[8]

The Chicago Tribune said, "The humor is so predictable and so stale that it fails to produce any laughs",[9] while The Philadelphia Inquirer commented that "The 1/2 Hour News Hour is slow torture all by itself."[10] Metacritic's television division, which produces composite scores based on prominent reviewers' opinions of television pilots, other episodes, and/or DVD releases,[11] gave The Half Hour News Hour pilots a score of 12 out of 100,[12] making it the lowest-rated television production ever reviewed on the site.[13] Despite the pilots' poor reviews, the show continued to lead its time slot in the ratings among cable news networks.[5] The show's lead over its competition shrank considerably, however, with its August 5, 2007, airing.

Cancellation

The show's cancellation was announced on August 14, 2007, and its last episode aired on September 23, 2007. At the time, Bill Shine, the Senior Vice President of programming at Fox News, stated that "we are considering ways to retool the show for future scheduling needs."[1]

See also

Fox News Channel

Other related programming

References

  1. ^ a b "TVNewser | Jobs in TV News". www.mediabistro.com. Archived from the original on September 7, 2007.
  2. ^ a b "Fox News Preps News Satire Show". Forbes. 2006-11-20. Archived from the original on 2006-11-25.
  3. ^ "Dennis Miller". TV.com.
  4. ^ Learmonth, Michael (2007-02-12). "FNC takes satire out for spin". Variety.
  5. ^ a b "TVNewser | Jobs in TV News". www.mediabistro.com.
  6. ^ "TVNewser | Jobs in TV News". www.mediabistro.com. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.
  7. mediabistro.com
    . 2007-03-04.
  8. ^ "11 Most Disappointing TV Shows of the 2000s". 11points.com. 15 December 2009.
  9. ^ Ryan, Maureen (2007-02-16). "'24' producer strikes out with 'Daily Show' copy". Chicago Tribune.
  10. ^ Storm, Jonathan (2007-02-16). "Fox News' fake news funny? You decide". The Philadelphia Inquirer. Archived from the original on 2007-03-07. Retrieved 2007-02-20.
  11. ^ About Metascores Metacritic.
  12. ^ 1/2 Hour News Hour, The. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2007-06-02.
  13. ^ "San Francisco Bay Guardian | Looking for a Guardian article?". Archived from the original on November 16, 2016.

External links