Onion News Network coming to IFC

ThePepsiSyndrome · Oct 29, 2010

I saw a commercial for this yesterday and had to look it up on the net to see if I saw it right.

Yep, it's true.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/fake-area-newspaper-gets-real-television-show/

New York Times
Friday, October 29, 2010

Fake Area Newspaper Gets Real Television Show
By DAVE ITZKOFF

The Onion, the satirical news organization that broke the fake story that the smoke monster from “Lost” would receive its own spin-off series and cheekily reported that television critics who praised “The Wire” had never seen the show, is itself headed to the small screen.

On Monday, the Independent Film Channel announced that it was developing a television series based on The Onion, the fake weekly newspaper and Web site, as part of a comedy-heavy slate of new programming that also features the “Arrested Development” alumni David Cross and Will Arnett, and the Canadian comedy troupe the Kids in the Hall.

The Onion series, called “Onion News Network,” will bring the deadpan sensibility of the Web site’s popular video clips (which detail silly if untrue stories like “Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of ‘Friendster’ Civilization” and “Obama To Enter Diplomatic Talks With Raging Wildfire”) to a half-hour show in the vein of authentic news programs like CNN’s “Situation Room” or “Anderson Cooper 360.”

“It was sort of the logical next step, in a way,” said Will Graham, an executive producer of the Onion News Network videos. “What more viewers can we mind-control?”

Mr. Graham, who is an executive producer of the “Onion News Network” series with Julie Smith, a fellow executive producer of the Web site’s ONN content, said the television series would do more than recycle those online shorts.

“We would never want to do anything that was just, like, ‘Let’s take what we’ve got and string it together and call it a TV show,’” Mr. Graham said Monday in a telephone interview.

He added: “If you look at CNN.com or FoxNews.com, and you see these little snippets there, now we’re going to give you the whole network, and make it the most authentic, aggressive, snarky, in-your-face news show out there.”

Mr. Graham said the television series, which is planned to make its debut in early 2011, would use much of the same creative team that produces the ONN videos, led by the head writer Carol Kolb, a former editor in chief of The Onion. “We’re going to feed them a little more,” Mr. Graham said. “Finally, we’re going to buy them computers.”

Though “Onion News Network” might seem an obvious challenger to popular television news satires like “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report,” Mr. Graham said it was taking aim at the traditional 24-hour news channels.

“It just seems to us, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are already doing such great comedy out there, without a whole lot of competition,” he said. “We thought it was about time that someone really gave them a run for their money.”

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I'll be interested to see if they can do a half hour show with the same high quality comedy as the two minute clips I watch on YouTube. Or if the anchor's can hold a straight face for that long without mugging for the camera, like that a-hole that does the news on Saturday Night Live now.

Actually this is one of the first (and only new) shows I've heard about that make me excited to have a DVR.

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Onion News Network coming to IFC

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