I co-created “Your Local News” with my friend, Andy Lassner. At the time, in 2002, he had a deal with Fox. We created the show through Fox and sold the pilot to TNN. This was a parody of local news, and I was the host. It was an attempt to show how ridiculous some local news operations have become. It’s all overly-hyped with generous helpings of sex. When I was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I covered stories that were ridiculous, but true. On this show we decided to cover ridiculous stories that weren’t true, but were all based on things very much in the news – and possibly could be true.
We cast actors who could improvise. We told them who they were and what all the pertinent facts were to their story, then our reporter simply conducted real interviews, so that the stories came off as real as possible. No script. Then we edited the stories and showed them to a focus group of real people who were told that these were real stories for a new type of news show. The stories were outrageous, but had the ring of authenticity. Most of the people in the focus groups were outraged that these things were happening in the stories. It was just what we wanted. Anyway, we edited the pilot presentation and turned it in to TNN. Right around this time TNN changed to Spike TV. They decided that it just wasn’t what they were looking for and didn’t pick up the show.
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