Despite having been cut back to half a season, the CBC comedy series 22 minutes is drawing big audiences this fall.

As Bill Brioux, the Canadian Press television critic, said on his blog, last week’s episode drew 925,000 viewers.

Brioux  says this surprising given that the show is not a promotional priority for the corporation. He says the cast has come to describe the show as “the series between two shows CBC promotes.”

“Being backed into a tight corner seems to have emboldened the cast and writers,” Brioux wrote yesterday. With little promotion coming from the corporation, they’ve taken matters into their own hands.

In October they released a video of 80 year-old Gordon Pinsent reading bits of teen-sensation Justin Bieber’s memoir. That video has 60,000 views.

This week they were quick to react to Danny Williams’ resignation and put together another Pinsent bit. They uploaded this clip in advance of tonight’s show:

The show airs tonight (Tuesday) at 8:30.

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	This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 8:21 am (30 Nov 2010)

The headline says it all. Bravo to the 22 Minutes crew.

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	Asides, This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 8:59 pm (21 Oct 2010)

You may have seen the ads on Newsworld for the blanket with sleeves.  I’m sure the guys at This Hour Has 22 Minutes had a field day with this…

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	This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 5:31 pm (15 Jan 2009)

The Ottawa Citizen has taken a length swipe at CBC satirist Rick Mercer.

Fellow Newfoundland comic and former 22 Minutes colleague Mary Walsh suggested to Maclean’s last month that Mercer has stopped being satirical, that he appears to have decided getting people outraged is no longer a smart thing to do in a conservative climate.

Mercer’s departure from that role is a sad spectacle. It is sad because political satire is such a rare and precious thing, especially at a time when there are so few satirists and so much that is satirizable. Satirists on top of their craft — think Juvenal in ancient Rome, think Jon Stewart in the U.S. — do not get cosy with their subjects, do not worry about ruffling political celebrity feathers.

In his prime, Mercer used to ruffle feathers relentlessly. But his Rick Mercer Report is no longer a sharp jab into the pomposity and self-delusion of politicians, having evolved into a celebration of The Star’s camaraderie with the pompous and self-deluded. The boyo with the rant no longer seems interested in keeping the celebs from running away with themselves. In fact, he provides the track and the shoes. Any sharp jabs he’s still capable of are reserved for non-politicians and non-celebrities who criticize him.

You can read the full article here.

What do you think of CBC’s television satire shows like the Rick Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and The Royal Canadian Air Farce. Have they been losing their edge?

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	Personalities, Rick Mercer Report, Royal Canadian Air Farce, This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 12:23 pm (22 May 2007)

If you go to the front page of CBC.ca right now, you’ll notice that the current #1 search on the web site is “Mansbridge Heat Vision.”

When you click it, you get a photo of CBC TV anchor Peter Mansbridge and, well, his heat vision.

Turns out, it was a gag from the fine folks at This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

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	The Odd File, This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 1:09 pm (14 Mar 2007)

You know it’s going to be a tough night on the stand-up comic circuit when the club you’re playing at is literally bombed just before your show. Twice.
     In Afghanistan to shoot a CBC-TV comedy special, a troupe of Canadian comics this weekend had to rush to bomb shelters before starting their set, thanks to two rocket attacks on the airfield.
     ”Saturday night! Well hello Taliban,” shouted Shaun Majumder from This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Majumder, CBC Radio’s comic-de-jour, now lives in Los Angeles. He was joined on stage by Mark Critch and Irwin Barker, also from This Hour, Tim Nutt from the Comedy Network’s Just for Laughs Tour and Erica Sigurdson from the Halifax Comedy Festival.
     The show will air in Canada next March. This Hour Has 22 Minutes returns to CBC Television on Tuesday, January 16.

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	This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 2:35 am (11 Dec 2006)

The time slot hosting The Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes is now beating the American programming it competes against every Tuesday night from 8 to 9 p.m. The St. John’s Telegram newspaper calls it “a herculean feat for Canadian programming.”

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	Asides, Media Coverage, Programming, Rick Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 12:33 pm (10 Nov 2006)

Friday night is CBC-TV’s laugh night, even if it consists of repeats from earlier in the week. There’s 22 Minutes at 7:30 (Mark Critch at the Liberal Leadership Debate), Air Farce at 8:00 (Maher Arar gets YouTubed), and the Rick Mercer Report at 8:30 (skinny dipping with Bob Rae).

The funny stuff comes Saturday on CBC Radio One, with Man Woman and Child at 11:30 a.m. and The Debaters at 6:30 p.m.

For those of us not planning on staying in on Friday or Saturday (OK, those of you), what’s available online? I’ve always found CBC.ca to be a little lacking in the funny stuff, but it’s not entirely barren (though most of it isn’t housed on CBC.ca itself.)

The aforementioned Mercer has a very funny blog, which has become required reading.

The Liberal party and leadership is a bit of an obsession for Mercer – even the candidates that won’t swim with him naked. He takes a jab at party strategy in The Right Guy for the Job:

For those of us who enjoy Question Period for its pure theatrical value it’s nice to see that the Liberals finally hit their stride in the House of Commons. Until very recently, with big Bill Graham at the helm the Opposition was about as fierce and focused as a bag of kittens. Thankfully, over the break someone must have pulled Bill aside and told him what the job of the opposition is – to attack.

It’s not rocket science, it’s what the Tories did when they were in opposition and it got them the big prize. You waltz into question period, you hurl as many allegations as you can across the floor and sit back and see what sticks.

But the real punches come in his latest PhotoShop Challenge, which throws Liberal leadership “contender” Joe Volpe into the ring.

(Did you know that you can get odds and place bets on the Liberal leadership race? Pinnacle Sports puts the odds on a Volpe victory at 300/1. Perhaps this illustration by Andrej Sakic isn’t that far off….)

Interestingly, Mercer is shut out of the upcoming Canadian Comedy Awards, Oct. 25-28. Air Farcers Roger Abbott and Don Fergus are festival co-chairs, and the London, Ont. event will feature the full Royal Canadian Air Farce cast.

There are a goodly number of CBC shows nominated in the Television Category, including Air Farce, 22 Minutes, Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, The Newsroom and The Tournament. If you want them to win, you can vote for them on the CCA site.

Now seems like a good time to give a shout out to a hidden comedy gem on CBC.ca: Charlie Teljeur’s hockey cartoon, The Instigator.

Charlie has been doing a daily – daily! – sports cartoon online since 2000. I was expecting some wrath to come down following his provocative Tie & Belinda toon, but so far so good.

I was also hoping for some funny stuff on the George Stroumboulopoulos site, Strombo.com, which relaunched this week. But instead there’s a do-nothing ad for his radio show on CFRB and a few “too much information” blogbits, e.g.:

I love when teeth collide during kissing. The uppers and lowers locked in a quiet, yet purposeful, concentration is what drives me to her mouth.

Eeep. But I did enjoy his self-deprecating poke at himself on The One in last night’s The Hour.

If you do decide to check out his personal site, don’t get confused by the spelling of the URL.

As Ouimet points out, “Counterintuitively, it breaks the ou-ou-o-ou-o spelling rule, which would render it stroumbou.com.”

I accidentally typed “stromo” and got a site selling electric scooters.

And it simply can’t compare to my favourite site of all time: Zombo.com.

This site has been online, in the exact same form, since at least 1999 – the height of the dot-com bubble (which puts it in context.) For seven years now I’ve used it to give me a puerile laugh in dark times – put on some headphones and enjoy!

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	CBC.ca web site, Fun Stuff, Personalities, Royal Canadian Air Farce, This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 10:24 am (13 Oct 2006)

I think this has been online for a while now, but I just found it now. This Hour Has 22 Minutes keeps this page updated every week with their best video clips from the show. (Sadly, not available for download yet.)

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	On-Demand TV, This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 10:39 am (08 Jun 2006)