Thursday, October 4, 2007

Themed episodes
The roles of other members of the Chaser team included:

Charles Firth: played a hard-hitting reporter with highly-controversial opinions presented in a segment called The Firth Factor and another entitled Firth and Friends in which he abuses his guests, doing such things as gagging them and yelling in their face. The character could be interpreted as a parody of Bill O'Reilly, who hosts a program on Fox News Channel called the O'Reilly Factor.
Andrew Hansen: the leader of the CNNNN "newsband", which would play musical commentary for some stories, and occasionally lyrically interact with the other members of the cast as if actually talking to them. He was also Rudi J Blass, the director of Newstainment, who would create game shows and entertainment pieces based around big news stories: "They say comedy equals tragedy plus time, well I say game show equals tragedy plus now'." Rudi J Blass often appeared in a studio very similar to that of Larry King Live and would commentate on news stories. Hansen was also Simon Target, a reporter with a thick English accent, who appeared in several episodes.
Julian Morrow: CNNNN's US correspondent. Morrow would appear on a television as if he were overseas, although he did actually conduct a number of vox pops in the USA to highlight American ignorance of Australia, other countries and international affairs in general. He would, amusingly, still speak about stories with no relevance to the US and sit as if he were actually on the news desk, and when the anchors would look at the screen on the other side of the room at other out-of-studio guests, Julian Morrow would do the same.
Chas Licciardello: hosted Lameass, a parody of MTV's Jackass, with intentionally bad stunts. He also appeared as "Mongoose" in the Sky Chaser 8 news helicopter, as the producer of a new game show (allegedly meant to be "The Block" as a musical) and as a reporter of his own name, occasionally. In the first season, he was CNNNN's Brussels correspondent and whenever the anchors would cross to Brussels, a "Technical Problem" would cut Chas off before he could even say anything, leading Reucassel to say, "Sorry, we seem to have a technical problem there in Brussels."
Dominic Knight: former weatherman, now a reporter. CNNNN Cast members
Other regular features of the program included:

A newsbar, which proved so popular it was made available on the CNNNN website.
Advertisements for Fungry's, a multinational fast food outlet with a yellow cow mascot (slogan: "I'm fungry!" - "Fungry" is apparently derived from "fucking hungry")
Advertisements for Boggs Lager, an irresponsible beer company which promoted heavy drinking and even frequently marketed alcoholic products with: "The strength of fifty-four beers in a single glass" (slogan: "[Let's all] Get Boggered tonight!").
A Chaser Affair, a parody of current affairs shows Today Tonight and A Current Affair
Advertisements for Esteem cosmetics, whose vague advertising parodied the deliberately confusing manner in which cosmetics are marketed (slogan: "Esteem - because you need it"). Esteem advertisements had a penchant for spurious statistical claims ("an astonishing Impact Factor of 8", "85% more proven", "95% more womanly") and bizarre product descriptions ("Beautelligence", "Scien-sensuality"). CNNNN Post-CNNNN

List of Australian television series
List of Australian Broadcasting Corporation programs
The Daily Show, satirical "fake news" program in the United States
The Day Today, an earlier, British take on a similar idea