The Idiot Box (MTV)

The Idiot Box
The opening credits of 'The Idiot Box'
Created by	Alex Winter Tom Stern Tim Burns
Starring	Alex Winter Tom Stern
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	6
Production
Running time	30 minutes
Release
Original network	MTV
Original release	1990 – 1991

The Idiot Box is an American sketch comedy television series created by Alex Winter, Tom Stern and Tim Burns, which ran on MTV from 1990-1991.

After the success of Bill & Ted, MTV hired Winter, Stern, and Burns to develop a half-hour sketch comedy show for the network. As the channel was still strictly music-oriented at the time, The Idiot Box was mainly a showcase for popular music videos, but with a series of sketches, fake commercials, and parodies shown in between. Therefore, although an episode ran 30 minutes, there were only 7 to 11 minutes worth of sketches.

Inspired heavily by the likes of MAD Magazine and Monty Python's Flying Circus, the humor in The Idiot Box was rooted in absurdity and violent slapstick, often in the form of television and movie parodies and commercials for fake television shows (such as "Mumford the Yodeling Mutt" and "Who's A Total Idiot? with Tony Danza"). Each episode would end with a recap by the Max Headroom-esque VOTAR, "the future of television announcing", as he would criticize each of the sketches in the episode and occasionally quote lines from new wave songs.

Although the show was a hit for the channel, Winter, Stern, and Burns chose to cease production after six episodes and instead accepted a high-paying deal with 20th Century Fox to write and direct their own feature film. The result was 1993's Freaked, which featured the same brand of humor as The Idiot Box.

As of 2012, it's unclear whether or not The Idiot Box will be released on DVD. Winter and Stern have both expressed a desire to do so, but have reportedly run into troubles with MTV. According to an interview with Winter:

"I’m petitioning for it right now. I’ve been trying to get MTV to do it for years and it’s just impossible. It’s such a bureaucracy over there. I don’t think there’s anyone opposed to it but I just can’t get anyone off their ass and actually deal with it. But I’m hoping sometime soon. There was a moment where Anchor Bay was actually going to get all of it on the Freaked DVD and then at the last minute MTV changed their mind."