Roll up for the Chaser's news
With some Australian commercial television news broadcasts straying into light entertainment, The Chaser boys have taken note and decided to capitalise on the trend with their new show Media Circus.
Describing the format of the show as "news comedy crossed with a game show crossed with a panel show", Chas Licciardello says they've simply followed the lead of others this time around.
"The entire project is filled with comedians who want to be news people," he says.
"Every journalist wants to be a comedian and every comedian wants to be a journalist. I'm not quite sure what it is; it's bit like when comedians wanted to be pop stars and pop stars wanted to be comedians, no one wants to be a comedian unless they're not a comedian."
Media Circus will be hosted by Craig Reucassel with Licciardello taking on one-man media brains-trust duties, a role he has prepared for by watching 10 hours of news a day.
"That's far too much for any person to watch, I'm pretty sure it's a violation of the Geneva Convention for torture," he jokes. "That's the beauty of the ABC, when you torture people at the ABC at least half the world applauds, so it's good news for all."
The show has Ben Jenkins, Zoe Norton Lodge and Scott Abbot from The Chaser's consumer-watch program The Checkout as regulars on the show, along with weekly guests including journalists, who Licciardello says will finally have the chance to defend themselves in person.
The panel will dissect the week's news through a series of games, including Evil Mastermind, where viewers playing along at home get to decide whether a quote to do with the forces of evil was said by a cartoon villain or Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
"We've noticed that Tony Abbott not only likes to use the word 'evil' a lot, especially with regards to war, but he likes to use it in such a way that it sounds exactly like a fantasy movie," Licciardello says. "Let's just say I have noticed a striking similarity to various characters from the Lord of the Rings and in particular Vigo the Master of Evil from Ghostbusters 2."
Running for the next eight weeks, Media Circus will coincide with the G20 Summit in Brisbane.
In 2007, Licciardello dressed as Osama bin Laden and tried to gain entry into the APEC leaders summit in Sydney, before getting arrested with Media Circus executive producer Julian Morrow and their crew.
While we're unlikely to see a repeat of that magnitude of prank this time around, an invite has been extended to visiting Russian president Vladimir Putin to sit on the panel of the show and discuss the week's events.
"If Vladimir Putin wants to do some light-entertainment news comedy then there will always be a spot waiting for him," Licciardello says. "We can even have a bear on the set that he can personally ride if that makes him more comfortable, or maybe a tiger. There's always a spare tiger waiting to be saddled on the set for Vladimir Putin!"
The Chaser’s Media Circus airs today October 15 at 8.30pm on ABC.
