Is it a coincidence that this is becoming true? Or — cue portentous music — is it destiny?
The
comedy conglomerate moves into a new medium this month with not one,
but two, new television series sending up TV conventions as vigorously
as the original print product sends up newspapers.
Tuesday on Comedy Central saw the premiere of “Onion
SportsDome,” a parody of ESPN’s SportsCenter in which one of the
blustery anchors is just back from suspension and a top story features
young tennis prodigies who keep trying to run away during a match only
to be forced back onto the court by their parents.
And on
The slogan is “News Without Mercy,” and, in stories such as the one
eviscerating a “viewer” who sent in a correction of ONN “reporting,” or
the one about how profoundly a snowstorm has affected “the nation’s
idiots,” it delivers.
The shows are logical extensions of the satirical
publication’s online video efforts, begun in 2007 and recipients of
multiple Webby Awards, for best online material.
Onion.com Web traffic has more than doubled, the
company says, to some 7.5 million unique visitors per month since the
addition of ONN, also the name for the Web-based collection of
twice-weekly short videos. And even before appearing on TV, ONN’s
online efforts have already won a Peabody, the medal usually bestowed
on radio and television that ennobles the human spirit.
The series each have 10-episode runs, with options to be renewed, and feel like the right place for Onion to go now, says
“We’re trying to take the Onion comedic brand and to
translate it into video as we did first on the Web, and to take it to a
large audience and to make people smarter as a result,” says Hannah,
the company’s CEO and a true believer in the power of satire. “I think
our brand is great comedy, but I think it’s really smart comedy.”
In planning the plunge into television, Onion had in mind the track record of past humor giants such as
One answer came during a chance meeting with a former
party some years back. “He said, ‘Are you the guy who is the publisher
of the Onion?’ I said I was,” recalls Hannah. “He said, ‘You want some
advice?’ He said, ‘You have to constantly reinvent. You can’t rest on
your laurels.’ He said, ‘No. 2, you really have to protect your brand.
You can’t put your brand over all sorts of things.'”
“The Onion Movie,” released straight to video in
2008 with little fanfare and after a long incubation period, is a case
in point. It’s co-written by former Onion newspaper editor-in-chief
By 2007, an Onion executive told Variety the Onion was “no longer associated” with the film.
So while Onion has had approaches from and meetings
with TV people over the years, nothing felt right until Comedy Central
and IFC came knocking. “SportsDome” and “Onion News Network” are
produced in-house, in
headquarters for the Onion News Network Web video team and comedy
writers whom Hannah calls “the beating heart of the organization.”
“It’s so exciting to be in a position to do it on a larger scale, to do it for real,” says
Adler is one of a batch of
film students the company hired when it first decided to make the
investment in online video, figuring that was a good way to get smart
and fresh-thinking people at a relatively low cost, Hannah says. Adler
and her cohorts cut their teeth on the Web videos and now are running
the full shows, along with production staffers who were added as the
shows were being made.
“This is a really great intersection of two compelling things for us,” says
Comedy Central’s head of original programming and development. “Doing a
comedy show in the sports world is a natural. There’s no show like it
around. And to be in business with The Onion, they’re one of the
sharpest satirical forces in our culture.”
His channel was confident working with this
first-time producer because its Web videos are executed at a high
level, he says, adding: “It’s so clear so quickly that their attention
to detail is so intense. They’re so true to the vernacular.”
While there is an old theater maxim about satirical
shows closing quickly, Onion and its TV partners are counting on the
Web, video and print-product fan base to tune in — and on the fact that
you don’t need to please all of the people, or even a tiny fraction of
them, to be a success on cable.
A few million viewers, and you’re doing just fine. And “SportsDome” had the benefit of premiering at
The Comedy Central Web site this week graciously
tossed in a promo for the other Onion show: “But don’t forget there’s
also ‘Onion News Network,’ debuting over on IFC later this month,” it
said, “presumably sandwiched between a
OK, maybe not wholly graciously. But the joke
actually highlights a point: IFC has been moving away from its indie
film roots (Independent Film Channel is no longer the name) toward a
cutting-edge comedy orientation.
Both Onion shows instantly nail the atmospherics: A
little-known fact is that ONN on the Web has actually used real CNN
studios for its backdrops. In the TV shows, the graphics, the
over-aggressive promos and the screen crawls bursting with distracting
information are all dead-on.
But what really clicks are the actors playing the lead anchors and the material they’re given. On “ONN,” it’s
who is horrified at how bad a kidnapped ONN reporter looks in a hostage
video and whose official bio lists her “longstanding feuds with both
On “SportsDome,” it’s
One toss to commercial break sees the company’s HR person approaching the news desk to talk to Reiser.
The meat, though, is the news parody itself. (The
material for the TV shows is all new, although Onion does have the
right to repurpose segments onto the Web.) For “SportsDome,” a bit
about
the thin wall between exaggeration and preposterousness.
But the runaway tennis phenoms segment is perfect,
and a couple of pieces sending up sports features — about a handicapped
mixed martial arts fighter who faces discrimination because of his
(deadly) robotic hands, and a young Phillies fan with cancer whose
dream is to curse out a Mets player at a game — bring to mind the
pre-taped feature pieces that have long been a “Daily Show” highlight.
On “ONN,” favorite standing Web features such as the
simpering morning show parody “Today Now!” also make the transition. In
one early episode, the “Today Now!” anchors reduce a girl rescued from
a fire to tears by trying to get her to pledge to be as valuable to
society as the fireman who died saving her.
The great thing about the news-parody format is that
fresh bits come along so quickly that even one that doesn’t work for
you will be over soon enough. With such rapid-fire material, The Onion
is hoping to lengthen the half-life of its comedy empire.
And from there? “Even before we launched ONN (on the
Web), I remember we said, ‘If this thing works out, the next sort of
logical extension of it will be television,'” Hannah says.
So if TV works out?
“Can I see us going to the movies eventually? Of course.”
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ONION SPORTSDOME
Comedy Central
ONION NEWS NETWORK
IFC
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(c) 2011, Chicago Tribune.
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