Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era.

• Author: Maritato, James

Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. By Jonathan Gray,Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson, New York: NYU Press, 2009. pp. 288.

There can be little doubt that satire has become a popular and profitable form of television content in contemporary popular culture. From animated programs such as South Park that comment on politics and world events, to daily faux-news programming such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, U.S. television markets have become increasingly inclusive of biting and meaningful social criticism delivered through satire and parody. Satire TV attempts to illustrate satire's transition from an underutilized rhetorical style hampered by industry-imposed constraints necessary to reach massive broadcast audiences to a thriving, powerful, and playful niche media genre. The twelve essays of this volume explore the development, impact, and discursive potential of satire television in relationship to politics and illustrate "these programs' role in nurturing civic culture, as well as their potential place as sources of political information acquisition, deliberation, evaluation and popular engagement with politics" (p. 6).

Part I, "Post 9/11, Post Modem, or Just Post Network?," examines the state of political satire today in contrast to the earliest televised emanations of the genre. Gray, Jones, and Thompson engage in a robust theoretical discussion of the form and function of satire, the satirical functions of parody, and the fine line between meaningful critique of politics derived from humor and mere pastiche. Departing from early manifestations of televised political satire such as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and Saturday Night Live, the authors trace satire's development from a scarcely used tactic to generate humor and audience identification, to a media genre containing rich and poignant social criticism and that spans virtually every mass media channel. Gray, Jones, and Thompson chart the development of this genre from the 1960s to the present day, noting that "the shift from network broadcasting to cable narrowcasting is the fundamentally enabling mechanism" for the vast array of satirical critiques of politics present in contemporary television programming (p. 19). Whereas broadcast marketing strategies necessitated that content producers and distributors reach as many potential audience members as possible, narrowcasting strategies create smaller, yet loyal and...