CNNNN is a news and current affairs channel owned and operated by ChaserCorp. It was founded by ChaserCorp CEO David Stewart in 1983 to counteract liberal bias in the media and remains the cornerstone of a television network that now contains over 40 different channels, spans 294 countries and reaches a potential cumulative audience of 100 billion people per week (source: Roy Morgan).
CNNNN was the first to pioneer news updates every 3½ minutes, and continues to be the only news service in the world to simulcast the news in both standard definition and IMAX formats. In 1999, CNNNN was also the first network to offer its IMAX format over a dial-up internet connection. This service was suspended indefinitely in 2001.
Acronym for
Chaser
No
nstop
Network
News, CNNNN is a
comedy show on the
ABC in
Australia.
When I first saw CNNNN, I thought it was actually a real news show - some sort of
offshoot of
CNN. It is quite a funny show, with many jokes and puns crammed into it's twenty-two minute slot. The material can often be a
hit and miss affair, but there is so much coming at you so quickly that you don't have time to dwell on the stuff that doesn't work so well. It takes aim at news that's current, like the anniversary (and excessiveness of 'tributes' etc.) of 911, and the situation with
Iraq. It has segments like someone dressing up as
Osama Bin Laden and walking around the city (playing
Dance Dance Revolution and going shopping etc.) to test the effectiveness of Australian Security (Verdict: not good) as well as crosses to other parts of the world (
Here in the U.S., it's Code Aubergine) and stabs at politics (eg. Election posters with
Meg Lees, putting the rat back in Democrat).
Throughout the show, the program is broken up by
advertisement breaks that contain a
voiceover with "
CNNNN, We Report, You Believe", or other such slogans. Also on these breaks
adverts for '
Fungrys' are shown, Fungrys being a typical sort of fast food restaurant selling products like "
The Big Breakfast Burger in a Bun" which contains three eggs, rashers of bacon,
hashbrowns, a
croissant, and porridge, all in a bun. The next advertisement for Fungrys had coffee top-ups all day, which was poured straight into the aforementioned breakfast bun. It sounds rather silly, but the acting is quite good and the premise is very enjoyable. Also are ads for other CNNNN shows such as the CNX News Slam, which promises "
No boring stats, just the stats. All the big hits ((Cue footage of 9/11)). No explanations, just detonations", CNNNN for Kids (
Shaping tomorrow's minds, today), which features the
Powerpuff-esque Hyper Twins Rita + Lin (Geddit?), And CN-E-Z, which features a mix of easy viewing news. There is no real advertising on the ABC - it is a
government funded station.
The attention to detail is quite good, all the headers and captioning are done quite professionally - Even a little 'newsbar' slides along the bottom of the screen displaying headlines that would be at home on
The Onion (Think "
Ronald McDonald found to be just a phoney clown who doesn't do any tricks and
Couch Potato thinks he can lose weight with the Abdominator). If you were just glancing at the show, oucould be fooled into believing it
is a real service, except perhaps for the
Australian accents. I recommend giving this show a try, it uses a mix of comedy styles (not, thankfully, just limited to
lampooning current events) and is well executed.
Update 20/09/2002: Today at work, on a whim, I went to www.CNNNN.com
Very much like The Onion's site, but contains less content at the moment. The biographies of the reporters are quite amusing.