The Fox News Channel, dubbed by liberals as the conservative voice of news, aired its first episode of The 1/2 Hour News Hour Sunday evening, which creator Joel Surnow, also the producer of the hit television series 24, described in Forbes magazine as "The Daily Show for conservatives."

So for the sake of those who prefer the entertaining news style of The Daily Show over, let's say, Fox News' style of relentless bantering but want to avoid an honest but liberal slant, this show provides a much-needed outlet. It's about time Fox News realized that putting an ostentatious conservative and a wussy liberal in the same room with an ACLU member and a neo-Nazi is not the type of entertainment that attracts a youthful crowd.

Although the most ideal way to follow news stories is with print journalism, which provides more detail, if shows like these can draw the youthful crowds that the The New York Times often doesn't attract and thus increase people's awareness of what's going on in this country, then I'm all for them.

"The way I look at it, almost every comedy show or satire show I see uses the same talking points against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney," Surnow said in Forbes. "The other side hasn't been skewered in a fair and balanced way." It seems as though conservatives are fed up with being the object of humor and want to poke back.

Many argue that it's deceiving for Fox News to run a satirical show, which is open to fictional comments, among the rest of its programming, which is based on factual content. However, the show itself appears closer to Saturday Night Live than Shepard Smith's The FOX Report, and it airs late Sunday night after a set of specials. It's nowhere close to the primetime lineup. Confusing the two would be a mistake comparable to confusing Gray's Anatomy with the Discovery Health channel.

The first episode received mixed reviews. Most reviewers and bloggers think it's a good idea, but the funny factor is lacking.

The pilot showed potential, starting with the shameless wit of the two conservatives whom liberals most loathe, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, acting as the president and vice president of the United States. However, as things progressed, the right-wing agenda was pushed so strongly that it compromised the jokes, and it seemed the most boring segments took up the most time. The show finished strong with a segment on how to connect any problem to global warming in six steps, but it's got a long way to go before it will be able to maintain even conservative crowds.

In the end, the 1/2 Hour gave me a greater appreciation for The Daily Show's talent, which, although blatantly liberal, manages get even staunch conservatives rolling with laughter. It does not appear that Surnow has been able to generate that sort of reaction from any side of the spectrum.

Still, in spite of the show's rocky start, I congratulate Fox News for being among the first to concede that television news can be and most often is entertainment, and the last two weeks have proved that it isn't so difficult to do that considering the constant stream of headlines highlighting what to do with a dead porn star's body and a celebrity's new haircut. However, just because something is entertaining doesn't mean it can't contain factual and relevant content.

After conducting a study on The Daily Show's actual content, telecommunications professor Julia Fox from Indiana University concluded, "It is clearly a humor show, first and foremost, but there is some substance on there, and in some cases, like John Edwards announcing his candidacy, the news is made on the show. You have real newsmakers coming on, and yes, sometimes the banter and questions get a little silly, but there is also substantive dialogue going on ... It's a legitimate source of news."

The study also concluded that during the 2004 elections, The Daily Show contained about the same amount of content as broadcast news networks, even though the majority of its content was still jokes. Although humor is usually shallow, it can be used to teach relevant information.

Our generation is often branded with the failure of being gravely ignorant of what's going on with our government and in our country. Although satirical news shows are hard to trust for their reliability, in a generation so consumed by entertainment, maybe the creation of shows like the 1/2 Hour really is the best solution at hand.

Reach columnist Celeste Flint at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.