“Accurate, hard-hitting, with over a century of broadcasting experience, 407 channels, 9 billion viewers across 811 countries and cameras watching 80% of the world’s population, The Onion News Network is: news without mercy.”
Yes my friends, if you are a lover of humorous faux news than you surely are a fan of The Onion. If that beloved publication has been your go-to source for the reality of our world as reflected through a fractured pane of humor, then rejoice: The Onion continues its evolution today, from print to web and now web to TV screens everywhere.
Tonight at 10pm EST/PT you can catch the launch of the Onion News Network on IFC. Led by virile anchor Brooke Alvarez and co-led by her dainty co-host/touch-screen monitor expert, Tucker Hope, The Onion News Network (ONN) hopes to invade your television sets and reclaim the title of “Bestest Satrical News Show Ever” from such usurpers as The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Expect to see blood on the news room floor.
While the Titan-esque team of Alvarez/Hope run FactZone, ONN‘s hard-hittingest news program, other sub-shows will also be offered by the weekly 24-hour news satire network. For instance, early birds can catch co-hosts Tracy Gill and Jim Haggerty starting America’s morning off with lethal doses of pep on Today Now!; “raven-haired fact machine” Andrea Bennett holds down the ONN newsroom; former nervous breakdown sufferer Jean Anne Whorton hosts the news magazine program Beyond The Facts; political intrigue ensues with senior White House spy/correspondent Jane Carmichael; reports from the field come courtesy of Brian Scott, host of the Internet news show Brian Scott’s Internet News Show; we get our fix of left/right/middle talking head mania from FactZone “first responder” panelists like Duncan Birch and Nanch Fichander; and news you actually care about is provided by local Onion News affiliate, WONN5. If there is a better team of fascistic news people out there, the CIA had to neutralize them long ago.
As head anchor Brooke Alvarez told me personally: “The insanity has always been in news/journalism, we are simply capitalizing on it.”
Review
As you have likely come to expect from this brand, The Onion News Network‘s TV show is wonderfully demented and hilarious. In the first episode alone there are a multitude of eye-popping “headlines” to get your belly rolling with laughter. The stories (complete with segue skits) encompass the following:
- Teenage White Girl in Detroit Tried as a Black Adult in a School Stabbing Case.
- Kim Jon-il willing to suspend North Korean Nuclear Program for role in Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises.
- Continuous coverage about an attractive ONN reporter held hostage by the Taliban who is being denied vital makeup and cosmetics.
- A Today Now! interview with a boring young girl who tragically survived a fire that claimed the life her firefighter rescuer.
- 24/7 media stalking coverage of a history teacher who dared point out an ONN reporting error.
- A new California initiative that requires sex offenders to wear cutoff jean shorts, white tanktops and lightly-colored aviator glasses while in public.
- The Joe Biden band playing at the 2011 Super Bowl.
- Political analysis of Americans’ morbid desire to vote Sarah Palin into the White House in order to “see what would what happen.”
- A story in small town Illinois about a perfectly good car tire that was left behind a local Kroger’s.
- Suri Cruise barely escaping an attack by yet another assassin from the future.
- A “Today In History” segment on the invention of the handjob (with a very special celebrity cameo).
If one or more of those headlines don’t make you laugh out loud, you may want to check your pulse.
L to R: Haggerty, Gill, Alvarez, Hope, Some Guy
Though it’s the team of scathingly funny writers supplying the headlines and jokes, the ONN‘s team of faux news correspondents are a pretty witty bunch. Alvarez nails the role of a news anchor diva perfectly, tossing out egotistical asides about her own greatness and ego-piercing insults about her co-workers with equal aplomb. Tucker Hope plays the dogged sidekick unflinchingly straight, while Today Now! co-hosts Gill and Haggerty nail the overly-perky demeanors and inane “journalistic talents” of just about every morning show host that ever was. All in all, a solid cast of satirists who aren’t too hard on the eyes, either.
While these first few episodes of ONN do inspire more laughs (for me at least) than your average Daily Show episode, there are still a couple of questions in regards to this show’s chances at longevity:
- Will viewers stay in engaged for 30-minute stints of what is essentially non-news?
- Can this show, which is much more on the side of comedy than news, have same cultural influence as Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?
- Do enough people even get IFC to turn this show into a ratings hit?
The Onion‘s real strength (in my opinion) has always been the ability to deliver big humor in small doses. People could read an article here, an article there, derive maximum pleasure from the absurdist humor being offered and then go about their regularly scheduled business. A weekly half-hour news show definitely runs the danger of providing too much of a very good thing.
That ominous warning aside, upcoming episodes of ONN will feature some great material, including “Snowlocaust”, “Man-Horse Marriage”, the military court trial of a predator drone plane, coverage of the President Obama kidnapping, and an examination of “The Real America”. A a BONUS, check out a preview of “Snowlocaust” below:
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The Onion News Network TV show premieres tonight, January 21, 2011 @ 10pm ET/PT on IFC. Let us know what you thought of the show once you’ve had a chance to see it, or spew your thoughts across Twitter: @screenrant.
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This has been done in the last 15 years in Canada with a program called “This Hour Has 22 Minutes.” It’s a GREAT/FUNNY show!!
So it’s another fox news? Cuz that mess makes me laugh.
lol
Personally I find MSNBC a lot funnier.
“I’ve got a thrill running up my leg.”
Vic
Some of those stories have already aired on the ONN website but they are always funny and the onion Sportsdome is hilarious so I’m stoked.
If this clip is representative of the entire show, I don’t think Jon Stewart has anything to worry about. I think it’s much more interesting to see how he’s going to be able to make us laugh about real world idiocy and hypocrasy, rather than the manufactured stuff from The Onion. It seems like that would be much more challenging, considering how hopeless the rest of the news media makes us (or at least me) feel on a daily basis. While The Onion is just making fun of the news world, with Jon Stewart (and to a lesser extent Stephen Colbert), it feels like he’s right there with us, thinking, “What the #$%@?” I caught a few minutes of The Onion’s sports show parody a few nights ago. Maybe it was wasted on me because I hate sports anyway, but it seemed to me to be about as funny as a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. Or, in other words, not funny at all.
This show is just not funny. The only segment I liked was the one about Sarah Palin. It was a chore to get through the entire broadcast. I will check back a couple more times, but I’m not expecting to become a fan.
The Anatomy of Earth, and Global Warming Conspiracy
July 3, 1983
The real reason for global warming is the earth’s orbit around the sun is slowly decaying, and the earth elliptical orbit around the sun is shrinking. People take the earth’s magnetic field for granted, because it’s invisible, and silent, but the earth’s magnetic field keeps the earth at a safe distance from the sun, and the moon. The high temperature in the earth’s core (the earth’s engine) generates earth’s magnetic, and gravitational fields. The earth’s fuel system is referred to as crude oil, and natural gas wells. They are actually self pressurizing fuel cells, and crude oil, and natural gas are the earth’s fuel. The oil company’s crude oil extraction process compromises the earth’s fuel system, and shut off fuel to the earth’s outer core, by releasing pressure out of these oil, and gas wells. Under normal conditions the outer core stays at a constant temperature between 5000 to 7000 degrees celsius, and the pressure in the outer core, lower mantle, and in oil wells stays at tens of thousands of pounds per square inch. The pressure in an oil well forces the oil, and natural gas into the outer core, and is ignited long before it reaches the outer core, and enters the lower mantle, and outer core as flames, heat, and pressure.
The earth’s core is being fuel starved, and the core is slowly cooling. As the core cools the earth’s magnetic field will weakens, and the earth will be pulled closer to the sun. The high temperature in the earth’s core is not sustained by decaying nuclear material, or by a dynamo process. The radiation would escape during volcanic eruptions. No radiation has ever been detected during, or after a volcanic episode. Only crude oil, and natural gas by-products, such as the great pressures, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide gases, etc. The materials, and gases ejected from volcanoes originate from the lower mantle, and outer core region of the planet. Reference: Kenneth A. McGee, and Terrence M. Gerlach 1995/ Volcanic Gas: USGS Open files report -95-85, 2p.
The only way to reverse global warming is for the oil companies to re-pressurize the earth’s fuel systems. One way this can be accomplished is by igniting the methane gas in the fuel system. The ignited gas will expand, and create the pressure need to force the remaining crude oil, and natural gas into the outer core, and it will take many decades to reheat the core to normal temperatures. Crude oil, and methane gas was not created to fuel our industries, or automobiles. It was created to fuel this planet. Crude oil is the life blood of this planet.
Global warming has nothing to do with a hole in the ozone, Co2 gases, methane gases, the green house effect, sun flares, or the sun going nova. Tens of thousands of scientist believe the green house gas theory is false, this should be a cause for an alarm. Something is going wrong with the earth’s orbit. The events below are not separate events they are all part of earth’s orbital decay. The events below were reported by NASA/ Goddard Space Flight Center, USGS, and the American Astronomical Society, etc.
1. The earth is moving away from the moon.
2. The rotation of the earth is slowing down.
3. The earth is shifting on its axis.
4. Twelve o’clock noon use to be the hot part of the day, now three o’clock is the hottest part of the day.
5. The earth is wobbling on it axis.
6. The earth is developing a breach in its magnetic field.
7. Both polar ice caps are being melted, one at a time, during each polar ice cap’s summer season, and the oceans are rising.
The sun is millions of times larger, than the earth. As the earth moves closer to the sun, its radiance will continue to spread, and began to warm areas of the planet that are in their winter season. Areas near the equator will be affected first. Areas near latitudes 29 degrees north, and south will experience higher, than normal temperatures during the winter, and it will began to get cold later in the season in these regions. These regions are where global warming should be monitored, first. The progression of the earth decaying orbit should be measured by the temperature in winter. The warmer, and/ or sunnier it gets the worse earth’s orbit is decaying, and the closer the earth is moving towards the sun. As the earth moves closer to the sun its radiance will spread toward both hemisphere’s polar ice caps, starting from the equator, during the winter season. In the future there will be no more winters, because the sun’s radiance will eventually spread, and covered both hemispheres simultaneously, while the hemisphere that’s in its summer season will experience extreme high temperatures. It’s December 16, 2010 the sun is over the southern hemisphere. Houston, Texas is in the northern hemisphere, and the winters days are getting sunnier, and warmer, and the cold weather is setting in later into the season. What is occurring in Houston, Texas will manifest in the rest of the world, in the future. Areas above latitude 29 degrees north, and south are now experiencing winter tornadoes, this is highly unusual. It should be too cold for the development of tornadoes, during the winter months. I have a few questions to ask of you green house gas theorists
1. What does sunny, and/ or warm winter days have to do with green house gases? There shouldn’t be enough radiance from the sun for any green house gases to trap, during the winter months.
2. Why on a hot day is the sun radiance higher, than the ambient temperature? The green house gas effect is suppose to causes the ambient temperature (the air around us) to be higher, than the sun radiance, but if you stand under a shade tree the ambient temperature drops, move from under the shade tree into the sun’s radiance the temperature rises. In an actual green house the ambient temperature is higher, than the sun’s radiance shining into the green house. This proves green house gases are not the cause for global warming.
3. Why in the early 20th century, during the industrial revolution in America, and Europe, wasn’t there a recorded spike in temperature? The north east region of America was referred to as the rust belt. This region was heavily industrialized, and heavily saturated with Co2, and methane gases. There were high numbers of respiratory cases, and stick smog, but there was no spike in temperature in America, or Europe. In the early 20th scientists believed the earth was headed toward another ice age, due to the harsh winter weather, and below normal temperatures in summer. Global warming wasn’t an issue, until the latter part of the 20th century, in spite of all the air pollution in the early 20th century, why? Global warming should have been an issue in the early 20th century in the rust belt region, if green house gases are responsible for global warming.
4. Television, radio, or news paper weather reports never mention the temperature of the sun’s radiance? Generally the temperature of the sun’s radiance is higher, than the ambient temperature, and the temperature of the ocean. Meteorologists, and green house gas theorist blame high pressure, el-nino, the air flow off the Gulf of Mexico for hot weather, these are al, just peripheral conditions. They blame hot weather on everything, but the main cause, and that’s the increasing temperature of sun’s radiance. Notice they don’t even try to differentiate between temperature of the sun’s radiance, and the ambient temperature. It’s the sun’s radiance that heats the oceans, heat the surface of this planet, raises the ambient temperature, and it will the sun’s radiance that will be responsible for ending all life on this planet. They still treat the sun, and its radiance as if it doesn’t exist, and the sun play a major roll in our weather.
5. The E.P.A was established in December 2, 1970 to address the worsening air pollution, and the high number of respiratory cases, due to the illegal dumping of harmful chemicals in the air, underground, and in water ways. These harmful chemical were released by chemical companies, refineries, and steel mills. The E.P.A wasn’t established to address global warming. Global warming wasn’t an issue, until the mid 1990’s, in spite of all the air pollution, before the 1970’s, why?
6. Why is global warming predicted to worsen? Since the establishment of the EPA, the clean air act, and all the laws, and regulation pass by congress global warming in America should never be an issue. In spite of all the clean air initiatives, and measures being taken global warming is predicted to worsen, why?
7. Why are the most polluted cities, and countries of the world don’t have the highest temperature in summer. Places such as China, and Los Angelas, California, and Houston, Texas, and several countries in Europe generates the most green house gases in the world. The areas of the planet with the highest temperatures are the least industrialized, such as the deserts of northern Africa, the Middle East, And the Southwest region of United States. Arizona, New Mexico, and the state of nevada have the highest temperatures in summer, why?
As the green house gas theorists answer these questions, you will notice they will add
explanations other, than a hole in the ozone, Co2 gases, methane gases, or the green house gas effect for the causes of global warming. They will use highly technical terms to confuse you, but if you investigate their claims you will find it makes no sense, and they never mention the temperature of the sun’s radiance. It’s the sun’s radiance that’s responsible for global warming. Move closer to the sun, it gets hotter, move away from the sun it will get colder, and it’s that simple. Many naysayer tell me my research is not up to date. Fortunately for me, truth has no statues of limitations. I also been told it’s not the sun’s radiance that’s causing global warming, because the light from the sun has not intensified. That may, or may not be true, but I know the radiance of the sun is intensifying. In about 800 to 1000 years from now 2010, the people of this planet will beginning to face extinction. I’m fight for people who haven’t been born, yet, and that includes your offspring. I’m their representative, because they can’t act, or speak for themselves. If global warming isn’t reversed in time,they will have to face apocalyptic events.
Mr. Willie McDonald
cdnld30@gmail.com
orbital-decay1.blogspot.com
Hmm. I don’t know what the answer to this problem is, but I’m sure it involves Bruce Willis.
As long as the public stays asleep and doesn’t demand the facts, the truth about global warming will continue to be expolited, as well as the lies about “fossil” fuels and alternate technologies.
Right now the public considers Jon Stewart a credible source for news. In a few years the Onion, will probably host the Presidential debates, and gas will cost $15 a gallon.
Here’s an Onion headline for ya,,,
^
Stocks are up today, following the report that Big oil companies are working on a way to pull a jurassic park and bring back dinosaurs, so they can kill them off for oil…
Film at 11.