NEW YORK, March 28 (UPI) -- The New York publishers of the satirical newspaper The Onion are dipping their toes in the online video pool.
The farcical online video newscast, dubbed the Onion News Network, hit the Internet Tuesday, E! News reported Wednesday. At theonion.com, the Onion News Network claims to have set the bar for 24-hour television news "since it was founded in December 1892." It boasts channels in 171 languages and claims it "can be viewed in 4.2 billion households in 811 countries."
One of its first pieces spoofs the loss of U.S. jobs to illegal aliens by featuring a former corporate executive who "lost" his $800,000-a-year job to a Mexican immigrant willing to work for just $600,000 a year.
The spoof-filled print version claims about 600,000 readers so hitting the video side of the Internet opens the gateway to a potentially much larger audience. The "print" Onion is also available online.
"We've been waiting for technology to catch up with our frighteningly advanced vision for the future of news," Onion Inc. President Sean Mills told Wired magazine prior to the startup of the video newscasts. "That day has finally come."
