I saw this article somewhere today; I forget where exactly, but when I did see it, I memorized every single word of it:

TALK SHOWS BANNED FROM DAYTIME AROUND THE WORLD

A new deal has been made banning talk shows from airing between the hours of 9am and 8pm local time in every time zone of the world. In the U.S. alone, this has forced ABC to cancel "The View" after eight years on the air, leaving no job for Barbara Walters and making Meredith Vieira's job as host of the syndicated "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" her only job. ABC is giving that hour back to its affiliates. NBC has also dropped the third hour of "Today", thus scaling it back to two hours from 7am-9am once again. The third hour of "Today" will be replaced by new versions of "Tic Tac Dough" and "Concentration". CBS had no talk shows on their daytime schedule, so they were not effected.

And this is effecting syndication, too! After almost 19 years in national syndication, King World has been forced to pull the plug on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and is replacing it on all its stations with reruns of the last season of the most recent revival of "Hollywood Squares", which are expected to lead to another revival of the tic-tac-toe game show with Tom Bergeron returning as host. King World has cancelled "Dr. Phil" as well, clearing the deck for Sony Pictures Television to put "Pyramid" back on the air for what would be Donny Osmond's third season ever as host of the word-association game show.

Speaking of Sony Pictures Television, that syndicator had already announced they were cancelling "Life & Style" and "Pat Croce: Moving In" anyway due to low ratings, but the new deal has prompted them to scrap its plans for a new talk show with Robin Quivers this fall. In its place, updated versions of two other Sony-owned game shows, "Bullseye" and "Hollywood Showdown", will premiere.

And NBC Universal, which had already cancelled "The Jane Pauley Show" due to low ratings before this deal took effect, has now also cancelled "The Jerry Springer Show" and "The Maury Povich Show"; so far, only one game show has been announced as replacing any of the three talk shows: a new syndicated version of "The Weakest Link", based on the long-running British quiz show of the same name with George Gray returning as host.

Additionally, Warner Bros. has pulled the plug on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", automatically allowing them to renew its game show "Street Smarts" for a sixth season despite dismal ratings for that show. Gone are Buena Vista's "Live with Regis & Kelly" and "The Tony Danza Show", and replacing them are remakes of "Debt" and "Win Ben Stein's Money", game shows which the company had previously produced for cable, and Paramount's "The Montel Williams Show" has been given the axe as well, to be replaced by remakes of the short-lived game shows "Wipeout" and "Make Me Laugh".

Last but not least, policemen everywhere are checking houses for tapes of talk shows that aired in the daytime. Residents with such tapes in their possession MUST have them erased or face 365 days in jail. Any and all daytime talk shows that were kept in vaults are now erased as well. Again, this new deal applies only to daytime talk shows, not late-night ones which include but are not limited to CBS' "The Late Show with David Letterman".

And as if all this wasn't enough, a deal has also been made prohibiting networks and their affiliates from interrupting or pre-empting game shows for any special news reports or weather-related programming once and for all! Effective immediately, when news breaks, they MUST let the game show (and any other game shows following it) air in its entirety and wait until AFTER the game show is over to deliver the news EVEN if the President is assassinated, EVEN if a tornado warning is issued for any portion of a station's viewing area, or face $500,000,000,000 in fines and 50 years in jail. And they've also succeeded in making a deal prohibiting GSN from speeding shows up and/or doing split-screens during the closing credits; GSN must now air the entire show as is or else they TOO will face $500,000,000,000 in fines and 50 years in jail!

So, in addition to game show pre-empting/time-compressing/credit-crunching being illegal now, it looks like ALL the daytime talk shows are in their series finales today!

What's hilarious is that Thad has previously advocated EVERY SINGLE THING in his post -- and in the past he didn't mean it as a joke.

(BTW, no, I didn't edit the content -- just the subject lines.)

Oh my God, did you even TRY to be believable with it. This makes Kaiser's post look like Emmy material!

Can we just stop with the April Fool's stuff? Not because it's not permitted on the board, but because the efforts have sucked more than Paris Hilton at a fraternity party.

That does it. That freakin' does it. I'm headed for the bar. Those of you who are invited to join me know who you are.

Am I in? Drinks on me? :-)

Crow Bar? Cause I know who i'd like to use it on.

A round of Cuervo... on me.

[QUOTE]"...[T]he efforts have sucked more than Paris Hilton at a fraternity party."[QUOTE]

However, this line almost made it worthwhile. ALMOST! :)

Funny post.

If you'd been here any length of time and dealt with Thad anywhere near as long as we have, you would know just how UNfunny all of that was.

A round of caffeine free Coke on me....

(yeah, I know, but some of you know I don't drink alcohol.)