CBS All Access and Stephen Colbert are teaming up on an ambitious new animated comedy series, one that will require a quick turnaround to mock the same day’s news.
“Tooning Out the News” (get it?) hails from CBS Television Studios, with Chris Licht (“The Late Show”) and the “Our Cartoon President” team of RJ Fried and Tim Luecke joining Colbert as executive producers. Their already-illustrated Donald Trump will probably provide a helpful template for this series.
Watching the “Tooning” announcement video above.
“Tooning Out the News” will provide short daily segments leading up to a weekly full episode featuring a cast of animated characters mocking news of the day, and interviewing real world guests and newsmakers, according to Julie McNamara, who is executive vice president of original content at the CBS streaming service.
“This brilliant creative team is truly breaking new ground, marrying daily headline events with animation, to create their own unique spin on today’s news coverage,” McNamara said Sunday at the Television Critics Association press tour. “Whether you come for your daily dose or the full length episode at the end of the week, CBS All Access is the perfect destination for this innovative, comedic look at our culture of ‘Breaking News’ overload, and we are thrilled to be in business with these phenomenal creative minds from within the ViacomCBS family.”
And then Colbert put out this nonsense statement:
“The minute the imaginators at ‘Tooning Out the News’ decked their bleeding edge ideation bizmeth, I knew that the news jackers were ripe for our freemium growth hack pivot. Let’s go Omnichannel for UTTR! I also couldn’t be prouder to be working with my old friend, James Smartwood. Go get ’em, Jimbo!”