The bold geniuses at Comedy Central, who have long tried to tell us that MAD TV and Scrubs are funny, have dealt a fatal blow to the fledgling genre of sports news comedy shows with the cancellation of both The Onion’s Sportsdome and, much more importantly, Sports Show with Norm MacDonald. The move continues the network’s time-honored tradition of giving up (Strip Mall was funny, jerks), but at least Daniel Tosh will have two more shows to make fun of when cutting to his commercial breaks.
Thankfully, MacDonald has a bit of a sense of humor about his history with cancellations.
Macdonald quipped to EW that he had not been “officially” informed of the bad news, noting, “A Minute with Stan Hooper is still officially on hiatus,” a reference to his short-lived 2003 Fox sitcom. He also said that he was open to hosting a similar-style program (“I like doing a funny show where I don’t have to act and fall in love with a girl”) and talked up “an Internet campaign to save the show, almost like they do with shows about witches and vampires and aliens from outer space…. Maybe I’ll call [the network] and ask them to bring it back. I’ll say, ‘Just bring it back. How much could it hurt television, really?’” (Entertainment Weekly)
I thought Sportsdome was a good idea in theory, but it was much better suited for online clips on the Onion’s website, since a weekly half hour of generic sports humor just wasn’t going to catch Comedy Central’s 10:30 p.m. demographic of stoned college guys. Unfortunately, the same goes for Sports Show, even though it at least gave us timely material.
MacDonald is a very polarizing comedian, mainly from his days as the anchor of Weekend Update on SNL, in that people either absolutely hate him or they love him and hate people who don’t get his dry wit. I find myself in the latter camp, so this cancellation news stings a bit, especially since the guy actually knows sports. Thankfully, he still has his Twitter account to help us through boring golf tournaments, as well as video clips from Sports Show until Comedy Central replaces them with 2-minute excerpts of Jeff Dunham’s next 6-hour special. I’ve gathered some of my favorite Sports Show clips in the following clicks, and I’ll be hosting a therapy session on Tuesday evenings.
