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RUSH: We always try to take more phone calls on Open Line Friday, and to that end, we go to Carl, who’s calling from near Chicago. Hi, Carl. Thanks for waiting, and welcome.
CALLER: Well, thanks a lot, Rush. Good to talk to you.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
<a target=new href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRxFjf40xbI”></a>CALLER: I heard you talk about the 1/2 Hour News Hour satire show for Sundays. I thought they did two pilots, and the second pilot is going to run. Who makes the decision to make other pilots? What’s the life of this show?
RUSH: Well, let me give you the lowdown on this. By the way, speaking of which, I’m getting deluged with e-mails from people, ?Rush, the clip is on YouTube, and it’s linked on your website!? No, ladies and gentlemen, that’s the old one. That’s the clip from episode one. Episode two, which airs Sunday night at ten o’clock, has a brand-new skit featuring me as president that opens the show. I was told that was going to be uploaded to YouTube yesterday. There are two of them, and we’ve linked to the first one obviously.
Here’s what happens. They produced two pilots. The second one airs at ten p.m. this Sunday. The shows have to generate a certain rating in order for further episodes to be ordered. The rating, of course, will determine spot rates. The program has a cost. The cost has to be met, with a little profit thrown in. So it all depends on how well they rate as to whether more episodes will be ordered. I’m privy to a little bit of this that I can’t repeat right now. The process of getting it on the air has been something that’s been going on a long, long time and there are other factors involved. I have no clue whether it’s going to get picked up, by the way. I don’t know that. All I know is that it got great prepublicity before the first episode aired two weeks ago. It got tremendous audience response the first night. We’ll see what happens on Sunday night and probably go from there. But if it works then what will happen is there will be an order for 13 more episodes.
CALLER: Well, is the show sponsored?
RUSH: No. Well, it’s tricky. It does not have a dedicated sponsor. The Fox News Channel has gone out and sold advertising in the program. But here’s the difference with this. This is a program produced off site. This program was produced in Los Angeles. All Fox programming is produced in house, with existing Fox talent, existing Fox cameras, equipment, studios, and so forth. So the cost of doing a native show in the Fox News Channel is zilch. It’s already budgeted.


CALLER: Is Ailes producing any of it or have much to do with the creative writing or…?
RUSH: No. Roger is not involved in any of that aspect, but he is the decision-maker.
CALLER: Well, Olbermann and others are having a ball with it, and the good news there is they’re watching.
RUSH: Well, everybody in the cable news universe watched it and they poked holes in it and so forth, and as I say it even got some favorable reviews from liberal reviewers. I don’t know what’s going to happen with it, but I would love to see it get picked up, obviously. As I told you last time, the first episode aired and a lot of people said, ?Well, yeah, I liked it, but it was too generic. I could have written more timely scripts.?
I said, ?You gotta understand. These things are produced six weeks before they air. There’s no way to be issue specific. They had to evergreen them.?
The second episode is much the same. It’s got a lot of evergreen in it. There’s not a whole lot of issue specificity to it, even though I think it’s a funnier episode. We’ll just have to see what happens with it on Sunday night.
CALLER: Good to hear.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: Thank you.
RUSH: All right, Carl. I appreciate it.

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