TVSquad

This show went off the radar awhile back and left less traces of its existence than Amelia Earhart. But earlier today it came back, only to be blown out of the water.

David Alan Grier's African-American news satire Chocolate News officially got the big ugly axe from Comedy Central. This has been their third attempt to create a specialty fake news Daily Show such as David Spade's Showbiz Show and the lesser-known Sports Central that never made it past the pilot stage. And it certainly won't be the last.

So Comedy Central, have you lost your damn mind?

Chocolate News was far from perfect. The bits and sketches were a wide range of hits and misses with a few that knocked their targets out of the park perfectly. It also seemed like the ideal idea for a show for its time. So why did things fall apart faster than the characters in a Chinua Achebe novel?

Comedy Central promoted the show all wrong. The ads made it look like a black version of The Daily Show when nothing could be further from the funny. Then again, when you're dealing with advertising, truth isn't a big prerequisite.

The main format of the show resembled a one-man band of impressions and characterizations featuring Grier that tackled issues from the objectification of women in hip-hop to the stagnating print media market and some very funny rants and editorials from its star. But if you were drawn to the show through its promotion, what you were expecting and what you got could be two very different things. It was like opening a bicycle shaped package on Christmas Eve and discovered your parents had given you underwear instead.

Comedy Central will attempt to create another Daily Show-style show that tackles a certain facet of the news and the comparison to its surrogate mother will be inevitable. However, it's hard to top a titan as big as The Daily Show and putting it in such a context will doom it to failure.