ERPT Nightly News

“Thank you for watching, and remember to wake up at the right time. Good night.”

~ The hosts' iconic sign-off every night on ERPT Nightly News

ERPT Nightly News is ERPT 1's award winning news news program. The program was created by Jake Talone and Arnold Valosky.

The show premiered on August 7, 1972 on ERPT 1 during what was originally broadcast of The Adventures of Scrumpy the Viking. Scrumpy accidentally tried to walk down a flight of prop stairs made of fiberglass while on live television. When he fell through the fiberglass and broke his leg, he ended up being treated while the program's semi-functional camera continued to roll because nobody was sure it would start again if it was turned off.

Members of the ERPT founding group, Günay Ljajić, Arnold Valosky, Jake Talone, and Mark Dinglebark who at the time were working out of a film vault at Eruowoodian Film Production Lot they shared with various film reels, found that viewership for TAOFSTV had doubled (from sixteen-hundred to two-thousand) during the hour in which Scrumpy, who had drunk a bottle of Coca-Cola to cut the pain, had shared the screen with medical personnel and the stagehands. The insane phrase created as a result of Scrumpy's actor screaming "NIGHTLY!" over the saying of the "A.M." part of the name of "ERPT A.M. News" said in a sentence by the doctor - who was also playing the Evil Soviet Warrior Dmitri in that episode - later went on to become the name of the show when nobody could think of anything better. The first dedicated episode appeared a week later during the time before the sign off, featuring a roundtable consisting of Scrumpy, Jake Talone and a man dressed in a Smurf mascot costume, since the English-translated were sponsoring.

The program didn't go well for a number of reasons, one of the larger ones being that Scrumpy's actor, who was a normal person who immigrated to Eruowood from a town in Tendork, tended to get sunburns from the bright stage lights in the soundstage at Eruowoodian Film Production Lot. Another was the "call-in" nature of the show. The program featured the earliest call-in feature on Eruopian television. Unfortunately, the phone was hooked to a "party line" - the type of phone setup in which multiple people shared one phone line. The Colorscope copy from the program illustrated the show's problems:


 * ERPT Nightly News/Transcript of First Show

Hosts

 * First two: Scrumpy the Viking (played by Jørgensen Sørensen), Jake Talone, and a Smurf.
 * 1972-1983: Jake Talone
 * 1983-1985: Günay Ljajić
 * 1985-1987: Arnold Valoksy
 * 1987 (three episodes):
 * 1987-1991: Juan Martinez
 * 1991 (nineteen episodes): Feka Fanshiro
 * 1991-2004: Mark Dinglebark
 * 2004-present: Dr. Emily Transgenduh, T.G.S.

Add logo section here!