User blog:The Testcardiologist/The Media Bowels

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The Media Bowels (TMB) is an Eusloidian satirical television program hosted by Stuart Wells. It aired on EPT between 2003 and 2008, with a revival airing in 2021. The show was frequently controversial during its run.

History
In late 2001, Stuart Wells was making a one-off program for EPT called The Year Nobody Wanted. Part of the reason why he made this program was because of the September 11th terrorist attacks in Hopeland City. The program was reviewed several times by EPT managers and conceded him a full television series. In September 2002, a series known as The Media Bowels was confirmed to premiere in the 2003 television season.

A test series on the radio premiered on March 3rd, 2003, alongside the blog of the same name. The first season premiered on September 15th, 2003. The second season premiered in September 2004. The third season, consisting of thirteen episodes, premiered on May 2nd, 2005. The fourth series, consisting of thirteen more episodes, premiered in late March 2006, on Friday nights. In October 2006 it moved to Sunday nights for one hour and had two seasons in said format, including episodes broadcast around the silly season of the southern hemisphere. The season ended with a special episode, The 27th EPT-TMB eOffal Awards, acting as a two-hour special, rounding off the longest season which contained a total of 26 episodes. It then returned in October for an additional thirteen episodes plus a special episode, Into 1985. The seventh season aired from October to December 2008 and was made in a new studio.

Format
Stuart Wells primarily dealt upon issues of the week, including criticism of national and local television, Hisqish and international news channels and some tactics (like fictional news stories or television programs) to help in its shock value. There were four seasons in the half-hour format. Seasons 5 through 7 consisted of hour-long episodes. The series, rated M15+, contains excessive uncensored usage of strong language - kept even in reruns. When the program's topic was "too hot for broadcast", the channel "changed" - often to an unrelated Hisqish or even Jysanian channel - where the show "airing" there seems to be more controversial. This was a recurring inside joke.

Season 1
How the media machine examines the Eusloidian parliament plus a look at the Eusloidian tabloids and how they're fed.
 * 1: True Parliament Stories (September 15th, 2003)
 * 4: Globetel Simulator 2000 (October 6th, 2003): TMB creates a fictional scandal that is going to become a "vital part" of Eusloidian talkback conversation: a Morgan Fisher sextape.

Season 2
Stuart Wells travels to Neuckland to see the show's alleged "copycat" Eating Media Lunch. Stuart Wells goes to the set of "Eusloida's favorite Anglosovic cultural diversion", as well as the first "accurate" Eusloidian pornographical film. The segment regarding the film was highly controversial, but not as controversial as the Morgan Fisher sextape in the previous season.
 * 1: Eating Media Bowels (2004)
 * 4: Coronation Street (2004)

Season 5

 * 1: The Return (October 29th, 2006)

The Media Bowels returns with its newly-improved budget to talk about The Median Eusloidians, TMB's answer to EPRT's Greatest Eusloidians, asking ordinary people about their mediocre contributions to the country's history. In the premiere of a new segment, eOffal, we take a look back at Miss Eusloida 1996 - and the reasons why Eusloida doesn't need beauty pageants anymore. TMB is sabotaged by A Few Minutes where a report about a controversial book written by the prime minister is causing outrage from Hisqish and Atlansian political sectors - saying that they want him deposed. There's also Loving With the Stars and a porn DVD giveaway. Globetel is the key target of this episode. At the end, Wells joins I'm Really Ugly And I Need a Nose Job and ends up as a completely different man. Wells reviews a DVD made by Al-Aisbb and a show called Jihad's Worst Driver (obviously fictional) and a look back at an old "TV for oil" deal from the FAE. There's also footage of Wells walking in an empty park as reaction for the Pope's visit to Tursey. The last edition before the season's Christmas break. TMB looks back at the 100 most shocking moments of 2006, a look at the controversial book I, Katherine and the popular Eusloidian preschool series You and Me gets an unusual treatment. TMB predicts 2007 in media and politics (including an edition of The Price is Right where one of the prices is measured in Palesian prostitutes), plus a trip back to 1985 for the New Faces special of that year, revealing the worst fashions of the year.
 * 4: The Day The Prime Minister Caught a Fever Dream
 * 5: Attack Globetel
 * 6: Islamic Machine
 * 7: The Most Shocking Moments of 2006
 * 8: Promises for the New Year (January 1st, 2007)
 * 10: Big Brother: Greatest Eusloidians (January 2007)

With ECN lacking a show to compete against Globetel's Big Brother, EPT's Greatest Eusloidians and SBC's The Amazing Race, ECN fuses Big Brother and Greatest Eusloidians by creating the hybrid reality show Big Brother: Greatest Eusloidians. The ten finalists partake in a series of Big Brother-esque tasks, yet the winner is never revealed.

Season 7
Central to this episode is an edition of The Moment of Truth where the ghost of Arkwalth Zavkler is inducted by the polygraph to commit crimes against humanity. Also, a look back at Eusloida's soccer moms banning pornography. No eOffal tonight.
 * 2: The Moment of Zavklerian Truth
 * 4: Freak Show

Greatest Television Moments of Eusloida
Usually shown in the end credits. It was intended to be a "top 100", but this later deviated from the case.

Broadcast
The series was broadcast on EPT. It usually ran at 10:30pm (later 10pm from the fifth season).

Internationally the series had limited carriage - even though it was shown on some Eusqainian cable network [or at best a Hisqish network until it was dropped possibly due to lack of interest, and I'll leave it to Gineki, probably HBC Two or RBC], it was also carried on EPT World.

Home video releases
All seasons were released on DVD Region 4. This is a feat considering the high level of licensed footage and music used over the course of the series. No bonus features are available, but subtitles are: not just in English and French, but in Eikaroth (assisted by a student) as a marketing ploy.
 * Season 1 (December 2004)

Eating Media Lunch: rip-off or coincidence?
In 2003, TV2 premiered Eating Media Lunch, a series that was apparently similar to TMB, that was supposedly licensed by EPRT. The season 2 premiere episode featured Stuart traveling to New Eusland on purpose just to see how EML was doing in November 2003 and how EML looked like a copy of TMB, from set to contents.

Sextape scandal
Globetel Simulator 2000, broadcast in October 2003, was filmed around the time the first episode was finished. Around the time of filming, Wells received e-mail and letters about what would happen to Morgan Fisher by the time the fourth episode was shown.

Eusloidian Follies
An in-universe controversy refers to an episode of the fifth season where TMB reacted to the way the series was spoofed in Eusloidian Follies, with "political exaggeration of classic situations featured in the program". As an in-joke, while the series became critical of Eusloidian Follies, the channel switched to HBC Television showing a (non-existent) copy of TMB but made in Hisqaida, where the presenter (ironically played by Stuart Wells) was criticizing the Eusloidian program.

2007 April Fool's Day prank
The most controversial episode was broadcast on April 1st, 2007, in which the program was a prank presented from an alternate dimension where Eusloida was reannexed by Hisqaida and had references to Arkvalth Zavkler throughout. This infuriated a number of Eusloidians and Jysanians, but eventually EPRT was safe from the controversy. Had this episode occurred in 2012 and 2018 (where April Fool's Day fell on a Sunday), controversy would be wider.

Revival
In 2013, he submitted a pilot for a potential eighth season, however, EPRT showed lack of interest in renewing it.

In subsequent public interviews, Stuart Wells said that "The Media Bowels are a thing of the past", with the rise of extremism, and that a new series would easily "turn TMB into Eusloida's banned series", saying that "if that was about to happen, keeping in with the show's trademark shock value, EPRT would ban it entirely". He also claims, in a 2019 interview to EPR News Radio's interview show Newsworthy, that recent shootings that were announced on the internet were an example of "art imitating reality", claiming that shooters were likely inspired from the series, even though, in his own words, he says that "they watched nothing of his show". The interview also featured a second guest, Jeremy Wells, who presented the New Euslandian copycat series, who shares the same points of view as Stuart, especially since a shooting in New Eusland shocked the world. He cites a fictional Al-Aisbb DVD made for EML and questioned whether or not that kind of footage would be allowed in New Eusland in 2019.

On January 3rd, 2020, he announced that "a similar show" was to premiere on EPT in March, yet without revealing any further details, believing that it won't be "close to TMB", according to an interview. He says that the style of the show will be "more The Day Today" and "less The Mash Report". However, plans ended up shelved due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with EPRT citing "health concerns and logistic issues". A similar project, named TBD, ended up premiering on radio instead for EPR on TBD 2020, with Wells recording from home for most of the pandemic until the lift of some restrictions made him able to record at the EPR studios. Ratings were surprisingly good, often surpassing competing stations like SNR and ECN Radio, leading to EPT's head of programming showing interest on reviving TMB for once, citing the positive reviews of TBD and the cult following TMB had over the years, especially on social media, aside from the media circus surrounding the upcoming 2021 general elections in the United Republics. Citing concerns about the "politically correct", the rise of extremist movements and the possibility of multiple complaints to the Ombudsman and the NBCC thanks to them if it got revived, Wells was reluctant at first and asked a time to come with a final decision. According to Wells, EPRT executives cited the examples of The Onion and the network's own Eusloidian Follies, since they tackled the theme before and the number of complaints were "relatively low".

The "final season" premiered in June 2021. Tackling issues like political correctness, the pandemic and "calling everything by its name", as well as the rise in the interest in conspiracy theories in Eusloida and the rest of the world, the season consists of five episodes and ends with Wells saying that "A show like TMB makes no sense in this day and age. Because of the rise of social media and political correctness, what was considered risky back then isn't acceptable now. They say our media is being controlled by the far-left - I say that the entire media landscape, including the far-right, is brainwashing you. If you're watching a reliable news channel or a shady website where you're inflicted with ideas of discouraging foreigners from coming to our country, then you're being brainwashed. As the pandemic caused a massive wave of panic, as colonial history is being erased, as people refuse to take the vaccine, as people refuse to accept immigrants as western countries begin to subsume towards poverty, it's safe to say that the world has changed in the past eighteen years since the show started. I don't want to end this show on a happy note - these days it's safe to say that freedom of speech is a mere illusion, and that the rise of naysayers will lead to more panic. I demand the channels to start a massive news lockdown so that misinformation will be reduced". The closing line was subject to a lot of buzz when the first episode premiered, with most pundits praising that "Wells was brave enough to challenge the limits of freedom of speech while appealing to common sense".