"In a complex world, you need TV news that's faster... harder... scarier... all-knowing."With those bold words, satirical website The Onion launched its latest campaign to put only the finest fake news into the hands of web users everywhere: the streaming vidcast-based Onion News Network.
According to their website, "The
Onion News Network has set the standard for globe-encompassing 24-hour television news since it was founded in December, 1892. The network boasts channels in 171 languages and can be viewed in 4.2 billion households in 811 countries." With a strictly fact-based approach like that, they're bound to be at least as fair and balanced as Fux News already is.
The ONN service was officially launched only this morning, so there are just a few of their tongue-in-cheek parodies of the typical 24-hour cable news show segments on their website so far. The Onion plans to add more video clips to the site at the rate of two per week, and they encourage viewers to embed the growing list of feeds in their own web pages much the same way that YouTube does.
The production quality of the ONN videos available so far is quite high across the board. The writing is somewhat less consistent, but at its best it is wickedly funny stuff. Hard-core MSM critics like the people who read and post here at Democratic Underground ought to have a field day with The Onion News Network's satiric fake-news videos. After all, with timely stories like this to choose from, what's not to like?
It's not all fun and games at the ONN, though. The people behind The Onion take their silliness seriously, and they are putting a solid business model in place as part of this new parody-video service. As
this AP story explains,
The Onion's network will start out with two new video clips per week, supported by ads. An in-house staff of eight people will work on the videos, which have a professional look to them despite the buffoonery being discussed, such as a top-level technology executive who is forced to sell his estate and take a job managing a TGI Friday's after his job goes to an illegal immigrant.
{snip}
While the subject matter of the videos is sure to be funny, based on samples reviewed ahead of the launch, it's also a real business that a number of advertisers have already signed up for, including Dewar's Scotch, Hyundai and Red Stripe Beer. Mills said he expects the online video operation to become profitable by the end of the year.
All this comes as The Onion's print publications continue to expand. In early April it will launch an edition in Washington, its 11th, bringing its total weekly circulation to just over 700,000. The Washington Post Co. (WPO) is providing printing, distribution and help with advertising sales in the Washington edition in exchange for a share of revenue.
Its print publications remain profitable, but The Onion is moving more and more toward the Web, where it now draws about 60 percent of its advertising revenue versus 40 percent from print, about the reverse of where it was four years ago, Mills said.
Will The Onion News Network take off and turn into the satiric equivalent of YouTube? Time will tell. But if the early segments are any indication, they ought to be very popular among the politically-oriented viral-video cognoscenti with a sense of humor -- like, say, the Denizens of DU. Click over and take a gander at these examples of the ONN's fake-news video and you can decide for yourselves:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_our_troops_in_iraqhttp://www.theonion.com/content/video/immigration_the_human_cost
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