Daily Show's Jon Stewart launches joke $10bn 'Let's buy CNN' Kickstarter
TV host Jon Stewart launched a $10bn cash-drive to buy CNN live on Tuesday's Daily Show in a fake bid to save the 24-hour news channel which could be up for sale if Rupert Murdoch acquires parent company Time Warner.
The Daily Show presenter launched ‘Let’s Buy CNN’, a Kickstarter-inspired joke website, during a skit mocking the news channel.The site features a still image interface that users cannot actually donate through despite it offering humourous incentives to do so.
Murdoch’s failed $80bn bid for Time Warner last Wednesday sparked the campaign, as US regulations would require the mogul to sell CNN to avoid monopolisation, if a later bid was accepted for the media company.
A statement on the site read: "CNN, America’s first 24-hour cable news network, has been terrible for many, many years. Does it have to be that way? Who knows, maybe it does. So let’s find out for ourselves!
“This $10bn, all-cash bid for CNN would secure control of a massive television network reaching over 100 million homes in the US alone, which we could then use to rebuild a news organization befitting this proud land. Or more likely we’d use it to make a lot more poop jokes. Either way, you get to watch!”
For a mere $1bn donation, the host anchors of CNN will fight to the death in a ‘Hunger Games fight’.
'Let's Buy CNN' is not available for donation on the offical Kickstarter website.