Many of you may be unfamiliar with scientifical* humor analysis. While I won't go over all of general humor theory, here are two fundamental rules of humor:

1. The evolutionary purpose of humor is to enforce social structure by ridiculing undesired behavior. This is best observed in the good feeling of being in a group laughing versus the bad feeling of being laughed at by a group.

2. All humor is ridiculing undesired human behavior. Thus, animals are only funny so much as we can project human characteristic onto them.

Already, you can see why a show that ridicules liberals would have an advantage among conservatives, because, to them, liberalism is essentially an undesired behavior to be corrected through ridicule. This is also why liberals don't consider conservatives to be funny since liberals are often the ones laughed at, and being laughed at causes the opposite sensation of laughing with a group.

Measuring the level of humor of a joke is tricky as who the joke is being told to has a large effect on the humor perceptions of the joke. Not only do the joke recipients own prejudices and beliefs about human behavior have to be factored in, but so does that person's affinity for the joke teller and other joke recipients who may or may not be laughing at the joke.

Ignoring most societal factors (for this show, we're going to assume the joke recipient is watching the TV alone and has no special affinity for the fake new anchors since they are unknown actors), how funny a joke is comes down to the level of brain activation in comprehending the joke within approximately a quarter second of the joke telling. This comprehension can be do to the cleverness of a joke or processing it ridiculousness (for instance, seeing someone hit in the face with a pie if you have never seen such a thing before). I say approximately a quarter second because this space of humor activation--the cumulation period--varies from person to person, but this short time period is the sweet spot of humor. The more activation in the cumulation period, the more the humor area of the brain is activated. After this time period, the initial brain activity when the joke was first told will have died down and will not be compensated by the new activity. That's why if a joke takes too long to comprehend, humor is lost. This ignores the delayed humor reaction in which, due to confusion, the cumulation period happens well after the joke was told. The reason brain activation is translated to humor is because, when a certain amount of brain activity is caused by another's words, this is interpreted by the brain as showing that your thoughts are similar to that of the joke teller. Because of the social nature of humor, a perception of a similarity of beliefs and intelligence is most important.

For example, take this joke:

A woman orders a pizza. The pizza chef asks the woman if she wants it cut into six or eight slices and she replies, "Six slices. I couldn't possibly eat eight."

For a child who just learned the principle of the conservation of matter, this involves a large amount of brain activation and is perceived as quite funny. For most adults, the brain activation in comprehending the joke is low which causes most laymen to label the joke as "cheesy."

Here comes the problem in marketing humor to a large audience. While its easy to find jokes that cause a low level of activation in most people, a certain joke will only cause high levels of activation in a very specific group. By going for the funniest jokes for a certain audience, other audiences will be confounded or bored.

Jokes are rated on the Fleming Brain Activation Scale which ranges from zero to ten. The extremes are both theoretical as comprehending any joke takes some brain activation thus making a zero impossible to obtain. Also, a high amount of brain activity in a short amount of time would activate a self-defense mechanism that would shut down the brain. Thus, before a level ten could be reached, the joke recipient would black out and forget the joke due to short term loss quite similar to be being knocked out with a tire iron.

Focusing only on brain activation misses two important factors, though: Approval and disapproval. If one already as a dislike of the joke teller or the subject causes offense, this can keep the humor area of the brain from activation despite high activity within the cumulation period. This is why liberals seem immune to clever jokes from conservatives. On the other hand, if there is already high approval of the joke teller or the joke is aimed at something highly disapproved, then humor activation takes less brain activity within the cumulation period. This is commonly known as the "girlfriend effect" seen when a girl laughs at all the jokes of a new boy friend. She is essentially submitting to his views on human behavior as is common in the mating process. This is also seen when liberals laugh at "BusHitler" jokes that don't seem to be clever at all. Contrary to popular opinion, this isn't forced laughter as the end humor activation is exactly the same as that which would be obtained through humor activation obtained solely through stimulation of brain activity within the cumulation period.

Now, with that explained, we can move on to analyzing The 1/2 Hour News Hour.

First, we need to decided on who we are using as a representative target of the humor. My own humor would be a bad match as my high intellect makes me quite different than the average viewer. Instead, knowing this is aimed at FOX News viewers, we need to look at what is average for that. The problem is there are essentially two types. There are the conservative bloggers like us who are of above average intelligence, have a high understanding of politics, are hip to new trends in society, and, above all, are unbearably pretentious. On the other hand, there is the FOX News viewer who screams at the TV every time Hillary Clinton appears on screen and wonders why Sean Hannity doesn't shout more.

Let's simply use as our baseline someone who is an average between the two.

First, there was the segment with Limbaugh as president. Assuming the viewer is a Limbaugh fan, this portion would be considered quite funny even if not particularly clever. The most clever part was the secretary being named Rosemary, but even the canned laughter didn't get that joke. The line about the Sheehan shooting spree would be the funniest since Sheehan is quite disapproved of by the theoretical viewer who would laugh simply to finally see a joke about her on TV.

The next major jokes (I'm ignoring pacing jokes which are weak jokes meant to keep someone laughing who already was laughing but would miss activation levels in isolation) were about Hillary Clinton. Despite newer liberal subjects of high disapproval, Hillary is still high disliked by our theoretical viewer and thus jokes about her would have to be quite bad to not be considered funny. The first joke about her hiring a diverse group of angry lesbians would hit the mark quite well as it plays on the strongest perceptions about Hillary. The "4.99 a minute; 2.99 for each additional minute" joke about Hillary wanting a conversation has a low activation and doesn't play up the main negative perceptions about Hillary, but our theoretical viewer would laugh because of the humor of the previous joke had kept the humor area of the brain activated.

The joke about the denial of the Holocaust denial conference would be the funniest joke of the night for our theoretical viewer. The brain activation in linking the rhetoric of the denial of the conference to what the viewer knows of Holocaust denial rhetoric involves high brain activation within the confines of the cumulation period. This is coupled with the strong disapproval of the subject being ridiculed: Iran and anti-Semites.

There were then a few more jokes of basic brain activation ridiculing subjects of high disapproval which by the viewer would be considered "somewhat funny." The segment about the liberal books fell flat, though. While liberals values are highly disapproved, the book titles were not clever enough to cause enough brain activation to exceed the low hurdle.

The ACLU joke ad would have been considered funny because our viewers hates the ACLU. In this situation, almost no joke was needed for laughter, only the perception of ridicule aimed at the ACLU.

Later, there were a couple so-so jokes aimed at the daughter of Saddam Hussein, Suzanne Somers, and Time magazine firing people that would not have caused significant humor activation with the viewer (I should note that Ducky handled the Time magazine layoffs with a joke that was much better at stimulation of brain activity). The joke about Nigerians using a spam type scam to get debt relief was a good combination of brain activity (matching the rhetoric in their scheme with known spam e-mails) and ridiculing a subject disapproved of (spammers).

The segment about Obama (which was previewed on the blogosphere) would hit better with our theoretical viewer than the elitist bloggers. Most of the jokes were aimed at Obama's unearned popularity, a subject that had been bothering our viewer. Much ado had been made about the immaturity of the joke of the magazine being named "BO," but this was pacing humor in this context and not the main humor and would have gotten a laugh from our viewer.

The joke about Ed Begley Hr. not having enough charge for his car and then filling it up with his own human waste would be a hit with our viewer because he hates Begley and considers electric cars to be gay.

The t-shirt segment was an odd thing. Our viewer hates Che t-shirts, but many of the jokes on these shirts required explanations. Usually, explanations ruin jokes, but some shirts, like the Kim Jong Il "No fat chicks" shirt was funny if understood. Still, the explanations were handled ineptly and thus brain activation hurdles were not met making this segment fall flat.

The fake ad for celebrities looking for new causes was a guaranteed hit even without being clever since our viewer hates celebrities and all their stupid causes.

The six-degrees of global warming segment worked for our viewer as his perception is that global warming advocates use arguments that involve ridiculous leaps of logic and this joke played to that. Processing the ridiculousness of the explanations succeeded in causing enough brain activation for humor in our viewer making this segment "funny."

The second ACLU fake ad was also funny to our viewer because of his hate of the ACLU and crack smoking pregnant women.

The final joke about Ed Begley Jr. being raped in prison would be unfunny to many people since the subject is offensive, but it was funny to our theoretical viewer who does believe Begley deserves to be gang-raped for driving an electric car.

So, was the show funny overall? This becomes a questions of whether our theoretical viewer, upon looking back at the show, feels that a bond was made with his intellect and beliefs. This is a hard calculation to make as each joke has to be rated and the time between the jokes factored in. One really funny joke can make an entire half hour show be considered funny while some quite funny jokes surrounded by duds would leave the perception of the show being overall unfunny. in this scientifical analysis, the viewer did have enough humor activation that, upon looking back on the show, he would declare it "funny" but not "hilarious" as no strong bond was made. This means the viewer will probably watch again, but will not go too far out of his way to do so.

My recommendations: Since the show can fit in many jokes, aim some at a more specific crowd (like the prejudices of us bloggers) while keep the majority at the safer, mass-market level. To build an audience, "hilarious" needs to be the goal, even though such jokes would turn off or fall flat to a majority of viewers.

Also, there were no jokes about liberals and the war. I assume this is because these pilot episodes were filmed a week or longer before airing keeping the jokes away from situations that are in flux such as Iraq, but hopefully this will be corrected in the future. Conservatives really hate the cowardice of liberals on the subject of terrorism and strongly desire their lack of testicles being made an issue of ridicule.

So, what did you think? Remember: Questioning my scientifical analysis only make you look foolish and dumb to the issue of science. I would then ridicule you and all of the scientific community would point and laugh. Science proves you would not like that.

* Laymen may be confused with the use of the word "scientifical." While it essentially has the same meaning as "scientific," "scientifical" is the preferred term within the scientific community. Within the scientific community, the word "scientific" is used exclusively for the phrase "scientific community."

UPDATE:

Proving my analysis, liberals did not find the show funny.

Also, if you missed the show, some clips are here.

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