| Genre: | |
| Runtime: | 44 minutes |
| Creator: | Jimmy Mulville |
| Presenter: | Roy Wood Jr. |
| Starring: |
|
| Channel: | CNN |
| Location: | CBS Broadcast Center |
| Last Aired: | present |
| Num Episodes: | 10 |
| Num Series: | 1 |
| Language: | English |
| Country: | United States |
| Company: | Hat Trick Productions |
Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY) is an American television panel show based on the British series of the same name. Piloted by Bravo, NBC, and TBS in 2005, 2009, and 2012, the show eventually premiered on September 14, 2024, on CNN and aired around the time of the 2024 United States elections. Two pairs captained by Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black answer news-based trivia questions on current events happening the week prior to an episode's broadcast. Unlike the British original, which has used guest hosts from 2002, the program booked a permanent host in Roy Wood Jr. The show received mixed reception but improved the network's ratings for its slot and was recommissioned for a second series in November 2024.
The rounds are similar to those of the British version, with "Missing Words" and "Odd One Out" featuring in both. Regular rounds included the following:
See main article: article and Have I Got News for You. The British version of Have I Got News for You premiered in 1990 with Angus Deayton as presenter and Ian Hislop and Paul Merton as team captains,[1] and was commissioned by a BBC department that included Mark Thompson.[2] Episodes are half an hour long and are bound by impartiality guidelines, as the BBC is a public service broadcaster.[3] The series is produced by Hat Trick Productions, an outfit helmed by Jimmy Mulville, and moved from BBC Two to BBC One in 2000 after Thompson became its director of television.[4] The program has a reputation for acerbity, twice replacing guests who cancelled with inanimate objects, and was once sued for describing a sitting Member of Parliament as a "conniving little shit".[5] Deayton resigned in 2002 amid claims that he had taken cocaine and slept with prostitutes[6] and the show now uses guest hosts, including Jo Brand, Jeremy Clarkson, Boris Johnson, Brian Blessed, William Shatner, and Gary Neville, who was grilled by Hislop on his appearance.
In 2005, Bravo expressed interest in airing its own version, with Sam Seder piloting versions for NBC and TBS in 2009 and 2012. The team captains for the NBC version were Michael Ian Black and Greg Giraldo,[7] while TBS hired Black and Sherrod Small as captains.[8] In a September 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, Mulville stated that previous networks had declined the show as they wanted it to be more pop-culture and celebrity-based. In early 2024, Mulville approached Thompson,[9] who the previous autumn had became the director general of CNN, about making a version of the show for his network. He was receptive to the idea and announced the series while speaking at the Warner Bros. Discovery TV Upfronts week presentation on May 15, 2024,[10] promising "a smart, silly, opinionated, and edgy take on the news of the week".[11] The show was initially commissioned for ten episodes.
In August 2024,[12] the Alabama-raised comedian Roy Wood Jr. was announced as the show's sole host;[13] he had previously been a correspondent for The Daily Show between 2015 and 2023 and had been involved in a prior pilot for the show.[14] Later that month, it was announced that Michael Ian Black would appear as team captain opposite Amber Ruffin, who had hosted several series of The Amber Ruffin Show and been a long-time writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers.[15] She had got her job after auditioning opposite multiple other late-night show presenters and contributors and news podcasters. The trio had not worked together before the show but did film a test episode beforehand.[16]
Episodes were recorded on Fridays and broadcast on Saturdays[17] and were an hour long. The series used a bass-heavy remix of the original show's theme tune[18] and followed next-day repeats of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, which had become CNN's highest-rating show since they began carrying it in March 2024. The series premiered on September 14, 2024;[19] by the following afternoon, extensive outtakes from the show had circulated on the internet. That episode saw Ruffin and Black accompanied by libertarian writer Matt Welch and comedian and A Black Lady Sketch Show creator Robin Thede; its next eight episodes featured among others Andy Richter, Mark McKinnon, Ana Navarro, Larry Wilmore, Adam Kinzinger, Anthony Scaramucci, Bomani Jones, and Tim Burchett.[20] On September 18, 2024, the BBC announced that they had scheduled the first episode for broadcast on BBC Two later that day and would air the rest of the series.
Subsequent episodes featured a pre-show disclaimer, "This is CNN. But also kinda NOT CNN."[21] By the third episode, Wood had promoted the show on Sherri and asserted that he had received messages from British people begging him not to perform poorly, prompting him to promise to treat the show "better than they treated Meghan Markle".[22] He later presented an episode of the British version scheduled for November 8,[23] the week of the US election,[24] on the grounds that the American version had taken a week off as they thought that the result would not be declared quickly enough.[25] He promoted this episode with an appearance on The One Show.[26] During his episode, he struggled with the pronunciation of Worcestershire and the villages Flyford Flavell and Upton Snodsbury; the mention of the latter two prompted the villages' MP Nigel Huddleston to praise the program.[27] Shortly before the tenth episode, the show was renewed for a second season;[28] Wood used the tenth episode to state that it would premiere in February 2025.[29]
The show's timing, in the run-up to the 2024 United States elections and during a period where any accusations of bias either way could impact the channel's centrist reputation, led the University of Connecticut professor of communication David D'Alessio to ask a The New York Times interviewer if "someone at CNN" had "lost their mind". Ed Power of The Daily Telegraph wondered "how CNN's British-born boss Mark Thompson was talked by Hat Trick co-founder Jimmy Mulville into importing the format" and considered the program less barbed than the original, though described the show as "cheerfully competent" and "nowhere near the embarrassment it might have been". The latter two quotes featured on CNN's announcement of its series two commission.[30]
Dylan Fugel of Paste felt that the show lacked the "meanness" of the original and wrote that it appeared "to sit uncomfortably between genres, a show that wants the "we're all goofing around" lightness of After Midnight or Whose Line Is It Anyway? while dealing with the "this world is going to hell" topics of competitors like The Daily Show". He also opined that Welch made the funniest joke of the night and that the show was excessively pacey, which he blamed on the competitors, especially Black, getting answers right too often. Joel Keller of Decider.com complimented the comedy of Wood, Ruffin, and Black, but felt the show was too long.[31]
The opening episode was watched by 737,000 people, which was significantly more than most CNN programs got in that slot but slightly less than Real Time. HIGNFY was beaten in the ratings by One Nation with Brian Kilmeade, which aired opposite on Fox News, and the first half of the two-hour special MSNBC Live: Democracy 2024, which aired on NBC.[32] Reviewing episode six, Weaver's Week of UKGameshows.com opined that the show included "a round or two they could comfortably replace" and "a round or two they could re-introduce to the BBC show", while Callum Jones of The Guardian reviewed the show seven episodes in and wrote that the show appeared "less wedded to actual news" and that viewers "after biting political punchlines [...] may be disappointed".