Have I Got News for You (HIGNFY) is a British television panel show, produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC, which premiered on 28 September 1990. It focuses on two teams, one captained by Ian Hislop and one by Paul Merton, plus a guest panellist on each answering questions on various news stories on the week prior to an episode's broadcast. The programme's format focuses more on the topical discussions on the subject of the news stories related to questions, and the satirical humour derived from these by the teams. This style of presentation had a profound impact on panel shows in British TV comedy, making it one of the genre's key standard-bearers.
The programme aired on BBC Two for its first ten years, before moving to BBC One in 2000. Until 2002, it was hosted by Angus Deayton, who was sacked following reports in national newspapers of several scandals about his private life. Since then, it has been hosted by a different celebrity each week; many of them add their own comedy. While the standard episodes are broadcast on Fridays, since 2003 extended versions of each episode, initially titled Have I Got a Little Bit More News for You and later simply Have I Got a Bit More News for You, have been broadcast, originally on the following Saturdays on BBC Two, and later moved to the Mondays of the following week on BBC One. The Monday repeats of Series 70 were standard 29-minute episodes until Programme 6, since when both broadcasts were extended to around 34 minutes in duration. Repeats of older episodes are named Have I Got Old News for You or Have I Got a Bit More Old News for You. Currently, only episodes from series 65 onwards are available on BBC iPlayer.
A series is broadcast roughly over the second and fourth quarter of each year, and the programme has gained widespread acclaim for its contribution to British television and comedy. It has received multiple awards at the British Comedy Awards including Best New Comedy Programme in 1991, Best Entertainment Series in 1992, Best Comedy Gameshow in 1999 and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. It also received the 2016 BAFTA Television Award for Comedy and Comedy Entertainment Programme.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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