The Survivor-izing of the fake news.

When you think about it, it really did take a hell of a long time for fake news to become a franchise. Think about it this way: Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975 -- and with it, the world's first-ever fake news program, Weekend Update. That's a full 30-year ramp-up to the full-on fake news juggernaut we have now.

Led, of course, by the success of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Comedy Central's crown jewel, fake news seems to be everywhere. Not only is The Daily Show itself a major cultural force that shapes the tenor of elections and has the power to banish little guys in bow ties to MSNBC forevermore, it's also one of the best bookings anyone with a book/TV show/movie/scandal to pimp out can get. Add to this trend the concurrent efforts of The Onion, and you pretty much have a situation in the entertainment world now where, much like reality television, there is a fake news industry. Even The Onion was pondering a move to the small screen, but if they can't get use of the presidential seal without catching heat, well, maybe best to leave it to the big guys at ComCen.

And considering The Daily Show's stately rise -- who would've thunk the show would achieve this kind of stature in the Kilborn days? -- Comedy Central seems to have taken it's own sweet time in going back to the well. Perhaps this is good, because if The Colbert Report and The Showbiz Show with David Spade had come out, oh, say, last November, they would have only felt more knock-offy.

And both are plenty knock-offy already. The Colbert Report is a half-hour romp starring Stephen Colbert, a key Daily Show player who, having his own spotlight now, is a kind of Aaron Brown to Jon Stewart's Wolf Blitzer. While fake news and stacked-deck interviews are every bit as much Colbert's bread and butter as they are his alma mater's, The Colbert Report is paced and framed more as a setup of shows like Countdown with Keith Olbermann: punchy and hit-parade-ish to the point of incredulity. It feels even less like the news than the news does. The fake fake news, if you will.

Nevertheless, Colbert is his own kind of comic genius, and the bumbly Stone Phillips schtick he employs doesn't get old quickly.

But Jesus H. Christ, take a look at The Showbiz Show with David Spade. It's not that Spade isn't funny -- he frequently is -- and it's not that "entertainment news" couldn't use a particularly eviscerating send-up -- oh, but it could -- but watching Spade do his rapid-fire barbs on easy targets like Tom Cruise, Hiltonia et. al. feels desperate. You kind of don't want to watch.

The thing about that, however, is that of the two, it's The Showbiz Show that weirdly is the fresher. Maybe it's because Spade's whole "Hollywood Minute" deal was in mothballs long enough that it feels new again -- the old favorite sweater theory -- or maybe it's just that after literally decades spent on some of the worst TV shows and movies in the history of mankind, that this guy actually has a second act.

But it's too soon to tell. We are in the midst of a fake news monsoon, and as the real news continually gets even worse -- and thereby harder to ridicule -- you never know: Even fake bad news is still bad. And fake.

The Colbert Report airs Mondays through Thursdays at 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. The Showbiz Show with David Spade airs new episodes Thursdays at 10:30 p.m. on Comedy Central, with frequent repeats.