“Tooning Out the News” has been renewed for Season 2 at Paramount Plus.
As part of the renewal, the show is being rebranded as “Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out the News.” The second season will debut on March 4 with a half-hour special to coincide with the rebrand of CBS All Access to Paramount Plus. The second season will then continue on March 8 with new segments available to stream daily, culminating in a weekly full episode, exclusively on the streamer.
“We are so excited for season two of ‘Tooning Out the News,’ which will feature even more incisive questions, unrelenting egomania, Freudian projection, shameless brand integration, tasteful nudity, unapologetic slander, and flat out lying,” said Colbert.
The show features a cast of animated characters, led by anchor James Smartwood, lampooning top news stories and interviewing real-world guests. The series is executive produced by Colbert and Chris Licht of CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and RJ Fried and Tim Luecke from Showtime’s “Our Cartoon President.” The series is produced by CBS Studios.
“We are ecstatic to be collaborating again with the talented creative team behind ‘Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out the News,'” said Julie McNamara, executive vice president and head of programming for Paramount Plus. “They overcame every obstacle 2020 threw at them and day after day delivered an extremely smart, inventive and funny program that offered our audience a bit of reprieve from the ‘regular’ news cycle. We’re cautiously optimistic about what’s in store for 2021, but no matter what, we’re eager to know what the series’ mostly informative segments and characters will have to say about it.”
The first season covered the many breaking news stories of 2020 and conducted interviews with an array of special guests, including high-ranking politicians, well-known entertainers and esteemed journalists, namely Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Chasten Buttigieg, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Alyssa Milano, Charlamagne Tha God, Symone Sanders, Alan Dershowitz, Rep. Ted Lieu and Matt Schlapp among others.
Season 2 will also feature new segments, including:
“The Establishment with Tory Hughes”
Veteran host and self-described “good Republican” Tory Hughes stands up for the center-right value of politely making things worse alongside an elite panel of Washington termites.
“Smart Talk Tonight”
In this prestigious newsmagazine series, “Tooning Out the News’” stable of highly respected soon-to-be-disgraced animated hosts sit across from real newsmakers in a real studio for intimate one-on-one interviews.