Yes, that title is correct.
Not Just Another Cable News Show, a half hour comedy series that will focus on politics and pop culture, will debut on CNN Headline News on April 5. It's going to air at 7pm on both Saturday and Sunday nights, with repeats at 9pm and midnight. That seems like an awful lot of showings for one night, but I'm sure these cable execs know what they're doing.
Fox News tried something like this with their Half Hour News Hour, which was canceled a few months ago. But this Headline News show has some potential, because it has a great group of contributors, including Time / L.A. Times writer Joel Stein, The Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar, Time.com's Ana Marie Cox, comedian Hugh Fink, and political strategist and commentator Amy Holmes.
I'm sure they're probably going to go for a Daily Show / Weekend Update vibe with the show, but I wonder if a comedy show like this, one that's actually on a serious news channel, can succeed? Do viewers want to see a clean separation between the two types of shows? Sure, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Anderson Cooper 360, and other cable news shows have elements of humor in them, but this sounds like it's all satire and humor, so I wonder if that will fly with the typical CNN Headline News viewer. Though maybe they're trying to get a different audience with this.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-25-2008 @ 4:58PM
kenm said...
They already have Glenn Beck's show, which is a mixture of comedic and serious segments. However, I think a pure comedy show will probably fail on CNNHN, if only because the majority of shows do fail. The Fox show was ok, but not great.
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3-25-2008 @ 5:54PM
Franklin said...
Regardless of your feelings about any of the news networks, I think comedy shows will fail because they're just out of place there. I don't go to a news channel for comedy any more than I turn to Food Network for rasslin' or ESPN for home makeover shows.
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3-25-2008 @ 6:31PM
Jake said...
Nancy Grace is funnier than anything they'll do on this show.
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3-25-2008 @ 6:50PM
WhatI said...
CNN Headline News needs to get back to the way it was - it used to be the only place you could tune in to get a newscast that was at least closet to update. If you tuned in at 2:00AM , at the very least you'd get news that is within the last few hours (they taped a half-hour, and then showed it a few times in a row). If something was happening somewhere else in the world, where at least 2/3 of them were awake, they would add something into the broadcast, usually at the top of the hour. It was really nice to be able to come home and be able to get the news you missed right away. Now, there is no place/station to get that - bring it back!!
As for the current HNN - I do like some of the "shows", but they need to call this CNNlight or something similar. More news is good news as far as I'm concerned, but we aren't getting that from CNN, HNN, or anyone else. CNN international seems to be doing a good job, but is not offered, at least on DirecTV. CNN is nothing but politics now, even the coverage of Iraq only references the politcal issues involved, very little else. "Breaking News" which used to be about earthquakes, plane crashes, or something else major happening within minutes, is now a term so loosely used that I usually reach for my remote. Nowadays, watching Spongebob can be more enlightening than the "Wolf Blitzer Cavelcade of Strongly-Biased Debators", or WBCSBD as I like to call it.
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3-26-2008 @ 5:55PM
Ralph said...
Man, I'm sick of Station Drift. I miss being able to put on Headline News at any time, 24/7, and see headline news.
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3-28-2008 @ 9:10AM
Kneescratched said...
Fox News actually still has a show like this called Red Eye. Rachel Sklar was even on that show a few times.
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