Kent Brockman News

"And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."

—Kent Brockman, The Simpsons

If TV writers need cheap exposition, the easiest way is to have a news Show Within a Show do it. Usually, the news anchors provide a Practical Voice Over. Sometimes, they do more than that (see Coincidental Broadcast and News Monopoly).

Of course, it gets boring having bland talking heads give information, so animated shows spice up their Practical Voice Over with a little parody. On any animated show intended for adults, you are likely to see anything but a news anchor simply telling the news. Instead, you will see anchors who:

  • Bring way too much of their personal life into their discussion of the news.
  • Feud with each other, or with the field reporters.
  • Have a blatant political bias, and bring it to every story they cover.
  • Indulge in bizarre (usually sexual) habits when they think the cameras aren't on.
  • Sometimes mutters what they truly think of their audience (thoughts that are downright nasty).
  • Try to make their stories more interesting with tortured metaphors and unfunny jokes, with bonus points when it's about something that isn't at all funny.
  • Speak in a weirdly smarmy monotone that never changes no matter what the story is (they say "eight hundred people died in an earthquake" and "happy new year" in the same way).
  • Segue without a beat from a horrific or bizarre story to a "lighter side" one. Especially if we only hear the wrap-up of the horror story. (As in, "...which if true, means death for us all. And now, "Kent's People!")
  • Give all their air time to weird, random stories instead of anything important.
  • Ask leading questions to a few favored guests on their show, and ask randomly hostile questions to everybody else.
  • Skew any "human interest" stories to allow the most blatant emotional manipulation of their audience.
  • Suddenly interrupting the newscast with frivolous new stories, often leading in with "This Just In..."
  • Are unable to finish their story because of sudden crises within the newsroom.

Though live-action comedies do them occasionally, these routines are much more common in animated shows. This may have to do with the fact that animated shows usually use multiple characters per actor, and can afford to have a diverse supporting cast (and also, of course, because it's infinitely easier to have Canon Discontinuity in a show which everyone already knows isn't supposed to be realistic).

Examples of Kent Brockman News include:

Anime and Manga

  • The characters on Cowboy Bebop sometimes got their info on new bounties from a news show called "Big Shot", which was aimed at bounty hunters. The cowboy hosts were a black man with a Mexican accent ("Punch") and a blonde bimbo ("Judy"). In one of the last Bebop episodes, it's revealed this was all an act:

Punch: We've been cancelled! Adios Amigos!
"Judy", in a very different tone: WHAT?!

  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Melissa Claire is a ditzy type who dresses in a Fanservicy cowgirl outfit (with a midriff and short skirt) and talks in a Southern accent; her job as a reporter seems to be tracking down interesting duels in Neo Domino and commenting on them, although it doesn't matter to her if she's covering a pair of "Dueltainers" in the city park or one of Sector Security's Duel Chasers trying to apprehend a fugitive - reporting from a helicopter for the second situation. No matter what the situation, she's always bubbly and cheery, but doesn't work very well with the rest of her production team.

Fan Works

Film

  • The live-action movie Anchorman had one of these as its main character, although he was a consummate professional until the events of the film take place.
  • Another live-action film example comes from The Kentucky Fried Movie, where between skits a newscaster would pop up with oddball news flashes like "I'm not wearing any pants, Film At Eleven."
  • The 1989 Batman film featured newscasters on a Gotham City news show, talking about a recent rash of killings by The Joker, when a female newscaster starts laughing uncontrollably and her astonished partner looks on in disbelief, trying to ignore her, before she collapses dead on the ground. (In her defense, she's just been poisoned.)
  • The two classic movie examples: RoboCop

Casey Wong: "On the international scene the Amazon nuclear facility has blown its stack irradiating the worlds largest rainforest. Environmentalists are calling it a disaster."
Jess Perkins: "But don't they always."

See our brave boys and girls on the front line of the bug war! Research on captured Bugs informs us about the enemy! [Censored shot of a bug tearing apart a cow]; Army representatives visit schoolchildren and let them try live ammunition! Join the forces: service guarantees citizenship! Would you like to know MORE?

  • The Woody Allen movie Bananas began with Howard Cosell himself presenting the "live, on-the-spot assassination" of the leader of San Marcos.
  • One of the news anchors in Die Hard speculate that the hostages have developed "Helsinki Syndrome, named after Helsinki, Sweden," and the other corrects him - Helsinki's in Finland.[1] Then the cut back to Nakatomi Plaza shows quite clearly that they're talking out of their asses.
  • In Bruce Almighty, Bruce/God's "adjustments" to Evan Baxter's brain reduce Evan to babbling incoherence: "Caca poo poo pee pee..."
    • Bruce's own live televised reactions to the news that Evan got the anchor position...

Bruce: Back to you, fuckers!!

  • In the Live-action/cartoon movie Osmosis Jones, cellular newscasters get into a brawl against each other as the film peeks into the stressful climax. When the ordeal was over, we see them again, but this time with bandages as a comedic result of their feud.
  • Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird has a scene where an anchorman, played by Chevy Chase, reports on the disappearance of Big Bird from his foster family's home in Illinois. He responds to a question by Grover (who is watching the broadcast), has to be corrected by someone offscreen on the pronunciation of the word "sesame", and finally gives the weather report as "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine?" in a completely deadpan tone. It then cuts to Kermit the Frog reporting on the scene, and things just get more Kent Brockman-esque from there...
  • In Groundhog Day, this is usually Phil Connors' style of reporting. He has nothing but contempt for Punxsutawney, its people, its festival, and anyone in his TV audience who actually cares about the festival. Part of his Character Development involves him growing out of this, and he eventually gives a genuinely heartwarming speech.

Live-Action TV

  • On The Weird Al Show, while flipping through channels, Al would always pass by a newscaster (also played by Yankovic) who would be reporting on a mundane, nonsensical, or just plain pointless "story". ("This just in...Ping-Pong spelled backwards is Gnop-Gnip.")
  • Red Dwarf used 'Channel 27' News to explain the Better Than Life game. Featured subtle jokes such as having a month called 'Geldof'.
  • The Muppet Show had the recurring "Muppet News Flash" sketch, where a myopic commentator would deliver some odd bit of news, for example a downpour of anvils or localized tidal waves hitting people, and then snidely comment on how ridiculous it was. Whatever it was would then happen to him. An alternate version had him interviewing some eccentric character played by that week's Special Guest.

Newsman: Well, whenever big news breaks...you certainly won't hear it here.

  • In the '70s Sesame Street would frequently send reporter Kermit the Frog to cover the re-enactment of some classic fairy tale or nursery rhyme; these would never go as planned.
  • Miranda Veracruz de la Jolla Cardinal from Married... with Children, who really didn't like her job.
  • The improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway? features the game "Weird Newscasters," where the actors perform a quick bit of Kent Brockman News.
    • Not to mention "Newsflash", where the twist is that the 'reporter on the scene' has no idea what he's reporting on. The two "anchors in the studio" usually open the sketch with a vaguely sexual comment before they "realize" the cameras are rolling.
  • The spoof news show The Day Today and its documentary spin-off Brass Eye both used pretty much every single one of these tropes.
  • The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, spoofs of "traditional" news shows, use these tropes frequently.
    • And were naturally delighted to discover a Real Life example on MSNBC, when anchors segued from footage of a cute jumping squirrel to the Columbine school shooting using the words "On a serious note..."
  • Monty Python's Flying Circus sent up BBC News in a great many ways.
    • This is helped by the fact that Richard Baker, an actual BBC newscaster, often appeared in this role on the show.
  • Jimmy Mcdonalds Canada portrayed a 1960s-era conservative pundit gradually going mad because of the liberalism of the time. The last episode ended with 'technical difficulties' as Jimmy went Ax Crazy on set.
  • In classic first season episodes of Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase was responsible for the "Weekend Update" news segment. It would always begin with him on the phone with an unidentified lover, saying things like "No, lots of people scream." This is unique in that the implied perversion is at the start of the report, rather than interrupting it.
    • From then on, "Weekend Update" has often incorporated this trope; the most memorable examples being those in the Not Ready For Prime Time Players era (seasons 1-5) that had such characters as Roseanne Roseannadanna, and John Belushi's editorials where he started off quite well but then breaks into his trademark catchphrase: But nooooooooo! and goes into a flurry of madness.
    • More recent non-"Weekend Update" examples include a reporter (Kristen Wiig as Michelle Dison) who clumsily hits on her attractive female subjects in the middle of interviews, a promo for a Sioux City newscast that brags about being "America's most Youtubed news team", though it turns out to be for things like constant off-color bloopers, and Bill Hader's Herb Welch, an elderly reporter for WXPD New York who antagonizes his interview subjects by whacking them in the mouth with his handheld mic and feuds with the anchor (Jason Sudeikis) during the broadcasts.
    • During the Kevin Nealon era, as a Running Gag, a picutre of a figure in the news would appear, Kevin would name him, and then Kevin would cut to the next story.
  • The Fast Show had a repeating sketch where a news reporter would appear to offer a special report, which was always something inane such as her American friend pronouncing "yogurt" differently. They also had "Chanel Nine" news, which seems to use some elements of this trope. It's hard to tell, since it's done entirely in Foreign Sounding Gibberish.
  • Mock the Week has done "Things a newscaster would never say" as an improv sketch, naturally almost entirely composed of examples of Kent Brockman News.

Russell Howard: Next on News 24, I'm gonna punch a zebra. Who cares? No one's watching.

  • In the pilot episode of Just Shoot Me, Maya gets fired from a news program after rewriting the teleprompter so that a pompous anchorwoman says that a decrease of gang violence was due "to the removal of the frontal lobe of my brain. And in related news, I wet myself."
  • Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! has a carryover from their previous show Tom Goes to the Mayor in Jan and Wayne Skylar, the "Channel 5 Married News Team". They added John C. Reilly as Dr. Steve Brule (who has since gotten his own bits—and eventually his own show) who provides useless health information.
  • Robin on How I Met Your Mother has done numerous silly things on the air: ridiculous Could This Happen to You? stories, Incredibly Lame Puns, and bizarre fluff pieces, especially when Barney's getting her to do a bet. When she transferred to Japan, Robin got to report actual news—with a chimpanzee.
    • Also her job on the morning news show, in which she gives CPR to the weatherman after he and the green screen catches on fire. Then she helps a deliver the child of her guest that goes into labor.
  • Minor version on Pushing Daisies, where after the Coincidental Broadcast, the follow-up is bizarre: "Up next: kittens on parade!" and "Can apes drive? We'll find out!"
  • Drop the Dead Donkey was mostly about the chaos behind the cameras, but occasionally Henry's temper or Sally's idiocy would carry through to the broadcast. There's also Damian's sensationalist field reports (which always resulted in the cameraman being injured).
  • Occasionally seen in sitcoms set in TV/radio stations: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, Murphy Brown, News Radio, Back to You, etc.
  • The cases on Boston Legal are occasionally commented on by outspoken legal analyst Gracie Jane, a parody of Nancy Grace. One episode also featured a reporter named Wolfgang Blitzkrieg.
  • Arrested Development has actual Los Angeles Fox News anchor John F. Beard (who also appears in several other Fox shows in the same capacity in a landmark 15 episodes, which ties him with Henry Winkler/Barry Zuckercorn for the most appearances of a cast member/character not featured in every episode.
    • "Next up; weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. Find out what this means for your weekend, after the break."
  • An important part of Ken Finkleman's The Newsroom, with Peter Keleghan's Jim Walcott serving as the Brockman.
  • Lexx had a recurring anchor for the season set on present-day Earth, whose twin obsessions were fluff pieces and the US stock market.

Bob: Here are some of the stories we're following for tonight's edition of News Plus. The Dow Jones is up 456 points. Firefighters have been called in to retrieve a cat stuck in a power line along I-95 -- film at eleven. And Cuba was nuked off the face of the Earth late this afternoon by President Priest, in retaliation for yesterday's evil attack on Orlando. There has been no reaction so far from Havana.

  • An episode of The Flip Wilson Show featured Flip and George Carlin in a newscaster skit that allowed Carlin to use this bit (and I'm paraphrasing) "Scientists discovered a new number between 6 and 7. They're calling it bleem."
  • Pretty much the entire news team in Back To You.
  • Brandy Barber (Gina Phillips) from the Monk episode Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa definitely qualifies. For one thing, most of her reports are emotionally charged rather than done rationally, and often has her skewing the story to humiliate the interviewee. It's because of her that Monk and Natalie get harassed by people jeering at Monk for shooting and wounding a Bad Santa with his own gun. For some reason, despite this, pretty much everyone seems to believe this broadcaster.
  • Parks and Recreation has Joan Callamezzo, host of the morning show Pawnee Today, who often tries to undermine or snark on her guests on air. (There's also Perd Hapley, who's just kind of a doofus.)
  • On an episode of The Armstrong and Miller Show, there is a sketch wherein a reporter in the Middle East speaks over satellite, while the presenter in the studio uses the delay as an opportunity to accuse him of various unsavoury things.
  • Attention Scum had a recurring skit starring Johnny Vegas: 24 Hour News, As Read By a Man Who Has Been Up for 24 Hours. It started as a reasonably coherent, if tired and slightly drunk sounding location anchor, but gradually devolved until it was just Johnny Vegas in a rumpled and soiled business with a bottle of cheap booze yelling "NEWS!" over and over again.

Music

  • Frank Zappa's "Billy The Mountain" has running commentary from (a parody of real-life) "right-wing fascist radical creepo pig" newscaster George Putnam:

Word just in to the KTTV News Service undeniably links THIS MOUNTAIN and HIS WIFE to drug abuse and pay-offs as part of a San Joaquin Valley SMUT RING! However, we can assure parents in the Southern California area that a recent NARCOTICS CRACK-DOWN in Torrance, Hawthorne, and Lomita, will provide the SECRET EVIDENCE the Palmdale Grand Jury has needed to seek a CRIMINAL INDICTMENT, and pave the way for STIFFER LEGISLATION, increased FEDERAL AID, and AVERT A CRIPPLING STRIKE of Bartenders and Veterinarians throughout the INLAND EMPIRE. But it is This Reporter's Opinion that ETHELL is a FORMER COMMUNIST!

New Media

Newspaper Comics

Puppet Shows

  • The French puppet show Les Guignols de l'info, running since 1988, is entirely about this trope. The anchor Patrick Poivre d'Arvor never misses an occasion to make snarky comments just after interviews or shows naive agreement when explained horrible things by "officials" (like the marketing plan to sell… the War in Irak). He is not above bullying (puppets of) journalists of other channels who have been fired or suspended for some reason, like David Pujadas or recently Harry Roselmack, treating them like trainees who must learn from him. And sometimes, we switch to Kent Brockman News inside the show, presented this time by Jean-Pierre Pernaut, the anchor of the 13 o'clock news on TF1 (a channel considered blatantly rightwing, pro-government, anti-strikers and anti-public servants) which has a tendency to show anecdotes about the "deep traditional France" or the holiday departures rather than important news.

Radio

  • The 'weird, random stories instead of anything important' version was a staple of radio satirists Bob and Ray, usually personified by inept roving reporter Wally Ballou (Bob). Sent to meet interesting people at the airport, Wally manages to find the guy who was headed to Paris to lobby for tunafish as the traditional meal for Bastille Day. Even when Ballou found himself pursuing an actual legitimate story, it quickly lapsed into absurdity - as when he discovered that a paperclip company was able to keep costs down because they only paid their workers 14 cents a week. ("How in the world could they live on that?" "Well, we don't pry into the personal lives of our employees, Wally...")
    • Additional amusing touch: Wally's broadcasts always started in mid-spiel. "-lly Ballou here.."
    • This sketch was parodied at least once on The Al Franken Show on Air America Radio. Wally Ballou is interviewing a British Airways passenger whose flight has been delayed, and Ballou remains oblivious that the person he's talking to, Muhammad al-Khazmani, is implied to be a terrorist hijacker.

Toys

Video Games

Anchor: Los Angeles was left shocked today, following a vicious gun battle between the LAPD...and you. They were all like, "BANG! BANG! Ya filthy varmint!", and you were all like "POW! POW! Oooh, you wascally wabbit! You got me!"

  • There was an old FMV PC game about art trading that would end each level with a news report on current events that would affect the values of certain paintings. The news anchor would smirk triumphantly while delivering tragic news and scowl while delivering upbeat news.
  • GTA Radio is full of this, especially WCTR in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
  • Disgaea 2 has a news show with two anchors - one of whom is entirely mute, between each chapter of the game, talking about demon-interest pieces or actual plot relevant information. Inverted in one such "episode", where only the mute character is present; the entire episode is spent in silence, giving absolutely no information at all.
  • Trivia game You Don't Know Jack would often have fake bumpers for Kent Brockman News over the credits. "Coming up: I couldn't string two sentences together to save my life. Tonight."
  • Midtown Madness 2 had at least one announcer like this (out of three or four); one of their race-opening lines ended in "...probably because I'm not wearing any pants!"
  • PC space shooter Galactix opened with this report: "In today's news, Brazilian lumberjacks cut down the last tree in the rainforest. A spokesman for the Acme Toothpick Company said, 'Gee, that's too bad.'" only to be interrupted by the alien overlord announcing his intention to conquer and enslave humanity. The anchor even looked a bit like Kent Brockman.
  • StarCraft II has news anchor Donny Vermillion blatantly paint Jim Raynor's rebels as ruthless terrorists even when his respondent tells him most of the civilian casualties in the most recent battle were caused by overzealous Dominion soldiers. This is further accented with ridiculous censorship of an interviewed subject, lots of talk over the logo, and other antics. Then he finds out that Mengsk, the guy he had been shilling the whole time, was the one responsible for his brother's death on Tarsonis. The final news broadcast is on how Donny Vermillion has gone insane and the respondent is taking over as anchor.
  • The news show seen at the beginning of Metal Gear Solid 4 doubles up as a fairly straightforward marine biology documentary, with the news relegated to bouncing, barely readable tickers displaying the weirdest stories ever (such as describing an accident victim as 'beheaded but in stable condition' and mentioning a 'Ghengis Khan impersonator spotted near Vancouver armed with an automatic machete').
  • SimCity Enhanced had Full Motion Video clips including reports on the disasters that you unleashed, er, happened to befall your city, which were usually happening right on top of the newsroom. The news anchor thinks that reports of a rampaging monster are all just a joke until it squashes her, reports a plane crash with some odd details, fails to take her own advice over remaining calm in the face of a meltdown and also reports the meltdown at a nuclear power station next door to the studio: everyone else has been rushed to hospital except her because "I don't have insurance".
  • Jane Valderama in Saints Row 2 speaks in the weirdly smarmy monotone and a WASPish accent that only slips when she says her Hispanic last name. Also indulges the tortured metaphors, especially while giving running commentary as an embedded reporter in the Gang War—she rides shotgun with the Boss, bringing her own shotgun.
  • The second Oddworld game, Abe's Exoddus, has the "Magog On March" news bulletins, where a Slig anchor (yes…) presents the latest crimes of the terrorist Abe and the declarations of Glukkon directors. Not forgetting the advertisement about Glukkon products sponsors.

Although Soulstorm Brewry's profits are plumetting, Mudokkons keep on disappearing here and there and the toilets are flowing back, our direction assure us that everything is alright! Huhun… I'm off.

Web Comics

  • Penny Arcade occasionally features stories by anchorman Randy Pinkwood, who will report on gaming news with the comic's characteristic farcical style. He ends each one by making some sort of reference to his incredible, and often bizarre, sexual escapades. (His name itself is, of course, a Double Entendre.)
  • Something*Positive had one strip starting with a news anchorwoman saying: "...And that's all for the Baby Pageant Massacre" and then segues into a report about Kharisma getting arrested.
  • The Nifty News 50 team from Sluggy Freelance fits this trope pretty darn well (one of them is even named "Qwirky").

Reporter: We have just received word that news is breaking on the set of Sluggy Freelance. We are not sure what the news is at this time, but we wanted to beat the other networks to it. I'm sure we will have more information any moment.
(pause)
Reporter: Well, while we are waiting, let's speculate wildly. Is Torg forming a cult? Is Riff a lesbian in a man's body? And what happened to that annoying "Sam" character? Foul play?

Anchor: In other news, I'm not wearing any pants. More on this after the weather.

  • Kelly, editorial cartoonist for The Onion, is close to one of these. This is a good example.
  • The news reports from El Goonish Shive sometimes seem to fall into this trope. The best examples are here and here.

Carol: And once again I am reporting live but have nothing new to report. In the interest of filling time I will be interviewing students who are still here with the hope of appearing on TV.

Web Original

  • Act III of Doctor Horribles Sing Along Blog gives us two rather hammy TV news anchors whose coverage of Captain Hammer's "inspirational acts of heroism" segues neatly into the following gem -- "Next up, who's gay?" (For extra humor, the next line is sung by Captain Hammer's Camp Gay Fan Boy.) They are later shown weeping uncontrollably on the air over Penny What's-her-name's death.
  • Segments on the Onion News Network tends to run with this, especially In The Know and Today Now!.
  • Rod Putman in Bite Me.

Western Animation

  • Anchorman Kent Brockman of The Simpsons (for whom this trope is named) had it all, and may have been the first example of this trope (or at least the character who popularized it). He blatantly skews reports to fit his political or personal interests, and his helicopter newsman hates him. He has been fired in mid-story at least once, quit in mid-story at least once, and always brings his personal views to a story. In "Radio Bart," he ignores the rescue of Bart from a well to cover a squirrel that looks like Abraham Lincoln (soon afterwards, the squirrel is assassinated, and a shaken Brockman pledges to "cover this (story) all night if we have to").
    • At one point it's implied that Brockman only covered the fall of the Berlin Wall because his infant daughter convinced him to. This is referenced in an episode wherein, at the advice of said daughter, he dedicates his entire half-hour news broadcast to a children's doll (this reporter found it hard to stop talking), and mentions only just before the fadeout that, on that same day, the president was arrested for murder.
    • The tail-end of a report: "...leaving the vice-president in charge." It's accompanied by a very small picture of the White House, with a thin trail of smoke leaking out. He then goes on to cover some plot-related local issue.
      • In the same vein: "...making this the most recent Segway accident to claim more than 1000 lives."
      • or "...and the fluffy kitten played with the ball of string all through the night. On a lighter note, a Kwik-E-Mart clerk was brutally murdered last night."
      • Played with in another episode when, having delivered the plot related exposition and complained about the slow newsday Kent is then given a breaking report that "Paris is no more. The legendary city of lights has been extinguished forever as a massive-" (the television is switched off before we hear what happened).
      • Brockman's story about the military. "Tonight, on 'Eye on Springfield': just miles from your doorstep, hundreds of men are given weapons and trained to kill. The government calls it the "army", but a more alarmist name would be... The Killbot Factory."
    • Springfield Action News is made of said alarmism, usually thanks to double-entendre: "Tonight's top stories, a tremendous explosion in the price of lumber. President Reagan dyes ...his hair". He then proceeds to hype up the "killer storm" bearing down on them, whose death count is currently zero but "is ready to shoot right up"

Kent: Oh my God! (Shakes fist at the heavens) Damn you, snow!

      • When faced with the imminent destruction of Springfield by meteor, Brockman chooses to spend his final broadcast listing people who are secretly gay.
    • In Brockman's defense, there are times when he is fairly competent in the newsroom, and his editors and camera crew are the ones who are screwing up. There was the time, for instance, when he wanted to show his interview with Pope John Paul II - and instead was presented with footage of a baby goat being fed a bottle of milk.
      • Amusingly enough, when he is trying to be professional, he has to deal with Arnie Pye in the Sky, who can't seem to keep his personal feud with Kent off the air

Kent: Arnie, this isn't the time!
Arnie: You're not the time, Kent! YOU'RE NOT THE TIME!

    • In the episode You Kent Always Say What You Want, it is also subtly implied that he was not happy about having to interview Homer in regards to winning his 1,000,000th Ice Cream cone at the ice cream parlor, especially when it forced him to abandon doing a heated discussion on the War in Iraq, but he ended up having to do so due to one of his show's sponsors being the same Ice Cream company that Homer won the contest in.
  • Futurama has co-anchors Morbo and Linda. Morbo claims to be a scout for his species' upcoming alien invasion, and regularly voices his hatred and contempt for all things - especially humanity - on air. His co-anchor, Linda, always responds to his threats with an empty-headed laugh.

Morbo: (all the time) "Morbo WILL DESTROY YOU!"
Morbo: (presiding over a presidential debate) "I now present puny human #1, puny human #2, and Morbo's good friend Richard Nixon"

    • The casual attitude taken to his threats could be explained by his behaviour with his wife - at a party she adjusts his bow-tie and he snaps at her, "Stop it, it's fine, I will DESTROY you!" This would suggest that's just the way his species acts normally. Then again, he has also stopped reporting to take a note about human weaknesses and referenced his people's mighty space fleet readying for an attack in the near future. You can't help but love him though; indeed, Fry said as much when seeing the news back in the 20th century in Bender's Big Score. "I miss Morbo."
  • In the South Park episode "Krazy Kripples," the reporter tries to liven up his story with creative metaphors ("If irony were strawberries, we'd all be drinking smoothies now, Tom.") Possibly a reference to Dan Rather.
    • In an episode of South Park where a whale is stolen from an aquarium, one on-site reporter makes a fairly on-topic joke: "It certainly is a WHALE of a problem down here." To which the reporter at the desk responds, "Yes, I can hardly BEAR it." Cue odd looks.
    • South Park also has a variety of weird field reporters, generally Threefer or Fourfer Token Minorities, to do remotes. (Curiously, almost all the weird field reporters, when on-screen, appear to be consummate professionals for the most part: "Thanks, Tom!...") The form is usually "Live, with that story, is..."
      • "A quadriplegic Swiss man on a pony." (He's lashed to it with ropes)
      • "A midget in a bikini." (A very short man in a polka-dot two-piece)
      • "An Asian man who looks like Ricardo Montalban."
      • "A normal-looking guy with a funny name." (His name, "Creamy Goodness")
      • "R. Kelly"
      • The "Simpsons Already Did It" episode even showed Kent Brockman himself as part of a hallucination where Butters sees the entire town as Simpsons characters.
    • During the fourth season, a recurring gag in news stories was to have the scene begin with the character(s) watching the tail end of a story about the ever-increasing size of Hillary Clinton's ass.
  • The Codename: Kids Next Door episode "OP CAKED-FOUR" features an annoying, pointlessly judgmental reporter who speaks in a smarmy monotone reminiscent of Howard Cosell no matter what's happening—until he gets scared, which promptly reveals that the monotone isn't his real voice.
  • The reporters on Family Guy are constantly blurting out odd things that they would never say if they remembered that the cameras were still on. They also have a blatant hatred for one another ("We now go live to Diane being a bitch. Diane?"). During an early episode where Death was incapacitated, they took the opportunity to get violent with each other.
    • Also poked fun at is the tendency of news organizations to relegate minorities to support staff, with "Asian Reporter Tricia Takanawa", and black weatherman Ollie Williams and his "Blacku-Weather Forecast," where he just yells out a succinct description. ("ISS GON' RAIN!" "ISS RAININ' SIDEWAYS!") Apparently he talks like that all the time, as demonstrated in his cooking segment ("EGGO!"), his helicopter traffic report ("EVERYBODY LOOKS LIKE ANTS!") and his adopt-a-pet segment. ("WHO WANTS THIS DAWG?!") One episode explains Ollie's speech patterns as the result of alcoholism.
    • The second episode of Family Guy involves the TV transmitter getting destroyed, taking out TV for all of Quahog. This results in the following situation:

Tom: With the cable out in Quahog, it doesn't really matter what we say. I'm the Lord Jesus Christ. Think I'll go get drunk and beat up some midgets. What about you, Diane?
Diane: Well, Tom, I just plain don't like black people. (the two chuckle)
Camera Operator: Uh, guys, we're still on in Boston.
Cut back to Tom and Diane, who have Oh Crap looks on their faces.

    • Then there was when the transmitter was fixed:

Tom: Well, Diane, that last news report was so good, I'm going to give you a spanking.
Diane: (playfully) Oh, Tom, I don't think your wife will appreciate that.
Tom: Come on, Diane. That frigid cow lives in Quahog. She can't hear what I'm saying.
Camera Operator: Actually, we're back on the air in Quahog.
Cut back to Tom and Diane, who have Oh Crap looks on their faces again, but this time, Tom has a wooden paddle in his hand and Diane is bent over

    • Drunk Billy was the Quahog 5 News Traffic Cam helicopter pilot. In the episode "Dial Meg for Murder", Drunk Billy tragically dies in a fatal collision with a highway overpass. In anticipation for this moment, colleagues Tom Tucker and Diane Simmons present a pre-prepared collection of accidents and near misses from Billy’s career.
  • In The Oblongs, the local TV news show is completely biased in favor of the mayor, who in turn is completely biased in favor of the town rich.
  • A Pup Named Scooby-Doo used a newsflash wherein the newscaster conversed with the Scooby gang.
  • Darkwing Duck features news anchor Tom Lockjaw, arguably inspired by the same real life personality as Kent Brockman, the famous Tom Brokaw. Lockjaw is considerably less often used than Brockman, but is nonetheless very much a whimsical addition to the show.
  • The Fairly OddParents has Chet Ubetcha, who like all the other grown ups, is very dim. He's also very short, and has size issues. He often reports on the aftermath of Timmy's wishes. He has a daughter called Yvette who takes his job when the kids take over the world. In the episode, "The Secret Origin of Denzel Crocker!", his mother, Nanette, was also an anchorwoman, and in the episode "The Good Old Days!", his grandfather, Chester, was a radio announcer.
  • Johnny Gomez and Nick Diamond in Celebrity Deathmatch.
  • Sheep in The Big City had two anchors, one of whom would give "unrelated" stories that were obviously related, once repeating the same story.
  • American Dad features two news anchors who are gay and married, who move next door to the Smiths early on in the series. They often bring their domestic lives into the news.
  • Drawn Together, of course, has several versions of Kent Brockman News, which, like every other aspect of the show, is deranged and nonsensical. The anchors usually state something that either Crosses the Line Twice or inexplicably correlates to the characters directly.
  • Ace Palmero from The Replacements.
  • Hank Anchorman from Johnny Test.
  • A Realistic Fish Head from SpongeBob SquarePants.
    • Also the regular newscasters (Bob and Barbara), who tend to laugh at whatever they report the few times they've shown up.

[Picture of a box of kittens in the corner of the screen, sound clip of a cat meowing]
Barbara: (smiling) ...and there were no survivors. Back to you, Bob.
Bob: Thank you, Barbara.
Barbara: Thank you, Bob.

  • The Proud Family has Marsha Mitsubishi, who very clearly hates her job and frequently comments about it on air.
  • Tovah Hernandez Carlson on Clerks: The Animated Series is a newscaster of the monotone variety.
  • Mike The TV from ReBoot fits this role, usually with huge amounts of Large Ham.
  • Planet Sketch has Mike Today and Sally Van who have gender related arguements when they do their newscasting.
  • Hector Ramirez, the parody of investigative reporter Geraldo Rivera from G.I. Joe, Transformers Generation 1, Jem and Inhumanoids.
  • Stan Blather from Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers is a parody of both Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite.
  • The Tick (animation) - events on the show are often reported by news anchor Brian Pinhead (pronounced 'Pin-ADE').
  • In an episode of Rugrats, the television breaks. The babies get a hold of a large box and cut a hole in it to substitute it. Chuckie hosts the evening news show, but ends all of his reports with "Why did this happen? Nobody knows."
    • And then it gets better as Phil and Lil whisper insults about each other to Chuckie.
  • In an episode of Legion of Super Heroes, two announcers cover the 343rd Intergalactic Olympics fairly well...but when a brawl between the winners, the Legion of Superheroes, and the Fatal Five break out, they cover it with no change in tone at all, even stopping for commercial breaks midway through the fight.
  • Cow and Chicken had an instance when everybody in the world believes the planet is about to get hit by a comet (it's actually a golfball suspended in front of an observatory's telescope).

With only a short time before the comet "Dad's Ball" flattens us all into pancakes, people all over the world are doing things they always wanted to do. Today, a man married himself (cut to the Red Guy marrying himself). And I always wanted to do THIS! (climbs on the desk and takes off his suit to reveal a weenie costume underneath) Look at me! I'm Weenie Suit Man!

  • Generator Rex has the tabloid news show "Ultimate Exposure", which is also the focus of the episode "Exposed."
  • Shandra Jimenez from Gravity Falls would, in most settings, be an Inversion of this Trope, as she would much rather focus on news that is important and believable. Unfortunately, she is stuck in a town that is notorious for rampant supernatural activity.

Real Life

  1. ↑ They're talking about Stockholm Syndrome
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