1/2 Hour News Hour no more

I knew the reviews for Fox's "1/2 Hour News Hour" were bad, but I didn't know they were this bad:

When the “1/2 Hour News Hour” made its debut in February, the weekly satire was panned by critics, gaining the unwelcome distinction of being the worst-rated program ever on MetaCritic.com. But it was well-received by viewers, and on many weekends it was Fox News Channel’s highest-rated half hour among adults ages 25 to 54.

Indeed, the Metacritic page for the show summarizes the overall tone of the reviews as "extreme dislike or disgust." Ouch.

Postscript: The Times fails to make clear that being Fox's "highest-rated half hour among adults ages 25 to 54" on "many weekends" does not mean a lot of people are watching. For instance, only 224,000 people age 25-54 watched the show last week.

Comments

[Rob]

I haven't had occasion to watch the "1/2 Hour News Hour," and I have no reason to doubt that it's as unfunny as most cable news efforts to substitute snideness for humor. To put the program's 224,000 rating in the 25-54 demo in context, let it be noted that in July 2007 the snide but unfunny Keith Olbermann had only about 134,000 viewers age 25-54.

[Sean-B]

Yeah, I guess if you don't count the Friday before you posted (i.e. the latest data), Rob, where Countdown was 284,000, you can find a date a month ago that makes your point. Touché. Did you really search through all the data until you found what you wanted? And not use the same site (mediabistro has 155,000 for your same day)? Does Countdown claim it's the highest rated half hour? Kudos for the hard work.