Fox News announced plans today to replace their evening line-up of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham with three separate hours of regular people talking about current events while drinking in bars across the United States.
“Actually, the idea came to us after Jeanne Pirro’s bizarre performance last Saturday night,” said a Fox programming executive on condition of anonymity. “If we’re going to have our star people appear to be drunk on television, why pay them that much money?”
From there the idea took wings: each one-hour episode will feature people in bars across the so-called “red states,” where selected individuals will volunteer to read national newspapers and magazines, gather in a bar, and go live after ingesting at least two drinks or two beers, preferably on an empty stomach.
The selected commentators will be cast determined on physical characteristics, ability to talk over other people, and any other interesting “attributes” that they can bring to the set. Location specialists from Hollywood are already scouring small towns across America looking for appropriate shooting spots.
The chosen commentators will be paid minimum scale and all the alcohol of their choice that they can handle while maintaining some semblance of speech and demeanor. A team of retired World of Wrestling Federation stars will act as “bouncers” on an “as-needed basis.”
Since news is deemed an essential service in most Covid-19 virus-ridden areas, Fox plans on opening selected bars across the United States solely for production personnel and the designated commentators. The shows will be filmed live, with a time-delay in case of obscenity or violence. “Frankly, we’re hoping for both,” the Fox source said.
“Look at this from the production angle,” the same source said. “Fox watchers will be seeing their own kind of people on television. You know, regular people. Small-town America. Production costs will drop substantially and we’ll never have to book on-air talent again. I mean, really, how many times can we have Devin Nunes on?”
When asked about the possibility of a White House response to the proposed change in programming, the source said only “a couple of MAGA hats on set should take care of that.”
As for the trio of soon-to-be-replaced commentators, another source at Fox was quoted as saying, “In all honesty, they’ve forgotten that they’re only commodities and they’re getting a little long in the tooth anyway. Cost analysis shows they really aren’t worth what we’re paying them for the time they spend on the air, and this change will probably increase ad revenue anyway. We can’t run commercial breaks consisting of My Pillow ads forever.”
He finished by stating, “they won’t starve.”
Neither Carlson, Hannity, nor Ingraham were available for comment at press time but it was rumored that the three left a Fox News executive meeting looking “shell-shocked.”
[NNNE here: BeeD noticed I was frothing at the mouth and trying to bite my tail (or was that Pressley?). He kindly put this together so I could take the night off. Just adding the traditional links and going back to staring longingly at the car]
BeeD also brought us this morning’s roundup. He was quite the busy BeeD today. Huzzah!: Good News Roundup: April 2, 2020: "Living on a Fault Line"
Mokurai presents: Renewable Thursday: The Media Narrative on Global Warming and Renewables