Shark Bytes

Newsradio is the greatest show to have ever aired. Well written and performed. Phil Hartmans death sucked but the 5th season was still better than most everything else on t.v.. Jimmy James as D.B. Cooper was genius.

Phil Hartman's death saddened me, and I KNEW that his absence would affect the show greatly.

Phil was THE MAN AND THE GLUE, and is irreplaceable!

The show lost their edge with him gone and I will forever miss him and that sexy voice of his! He cannot be topped!

May that MAGNIFICENT BASTARD rest in peace!

Good lord this show was brilliant. Although Phil's death was terrible, I'd have to say the final blow was Lisa marrying Johnny. Not only was it just a completely out of character thing for her to do, it also killed any Dave & Lisa sexual tension, which was always good for some amusement. Also, Dave and Lisa were one of the cutest couples ever to be on TV. Way cuter than Rachel and Ross.

Hi...I'm Troy McClure, Jr., shameless huckster...you may have heard of some of my dad's films, such as Christmas Ape Goes To College and Why The United States Will Never Adopt The Metric System...

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Rest in peace, Phil Hartman.

Being one of the few people who watched this during it's network run, I think it has stood the test of time unlike 99% of the sitcoms ever made. Everyone was great sans Andy Dick who became unbearable after two seasons (I was hoping they would writer his character off). On SNL, Phil Hartman was known as the glue that held the show together. I suspect it was the same case on Newsradio. I'm sure Phil would have wanted the show to go on and he would have been glad that his best friend Jon Lovitz took over, but it wasn't the same. Andy Dick's Matthew grew from annoying spaz to a truly disturbing and creepy guy who acted like a pre-schooler. Lovitz wasn't given much to do but tag along. The show was over but they went out and did it for Phil's sake.

R.I.P Phil Hartman

Per usual, this show reached a point of absurdity..Case in point: we learn that Andy Dick's character - who has recently left the station - is actually a licensed DDS who opens a practice across the street and spies on the station employees in hopes of getting his job back. This is what happens when you bring 'shrooms in to the writer's lounge.

It wasn't quite as good as I remembered, but it still might be the last great American office comedy. ("The Office" was originally British and I'm not certain yet if I see it as great)

It had some wonderfully kooky characters and oddball situations. However I felt like it declined a bit with the addition of Walt. He just wasn't very funny and didn't seem to serve any purpose. In addition to that he just vanished with as little reason as he arrived. Although I'm aware his character entering is not an option.

I vote "Never Jumped". NewsRadio had such excellent writing and talent as well as characters that I actually care for. It's a shame this brilliant comedy got no respect while that asinine Friends got all the attention.

I first saw my first episode in 2006. I really enjoyed The new Adventures of superman and personally don't think it jumped the shark

Phil Hartman death was basically the point of no return. But the show was already on this way out, it's just that his death removed the only reason I had bothered to watch it anymore.

The problem was the show started good, but then the writers turned every character into a clone of Andy Dick's character and went through the usual gamut of plot device cliches that are always potential JTS moments. Of course, this was to be expected when the studio suits constantly interfered and butted heads with the writers and the producers.

There was no replacement for Phil Hartman. They tried, but it just wasn't the same in season 5. Fortunately, the strength of the ensemble made the change bearable. It would have been much worse with any other show.

Don't be so hard on Jon Lovitz. He had big shoes to fill. Had the show gone into the 6th or 7th season, perhaps his character would have developed better.

Still one if the greatest shows ever.

To the poster below who inquired as to whether Jon Lovitz wrote a complimentary comment about himself I can say this: Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz came-up together in LA's Groundlings theater and probably no two SNL cast members since Belushi and Aykroyd had such mutual respect for each other. I didn't watch very many episodes of NewsRadio after Hartman's death; in my opinion he was about the most gifted sketch comedy performer in TV history, and it kind of depressed me to think about the circumstances of his death. I will say that, generally speaking, a) Jon Lovitz is a pretty underrated and unfairly maligned comic actor (Dana Carvey, Mike Meyers and Adam Sandler have done work AT LEAST as embarrassing) and b) the shows I did see were of the same quality as before Phil's passing.

The best U.S. sitcom ever. At least in my book. No one in the cast has done better work ever since. They may have moved on to ER, Bug's Life, Fear Factor, Broadway, and so on but Lisa, Dave, Jimmy James, Katherine, Beth, Matthew and Garelli did their best work on News Radio. I refuse to watch any season 5 episodes.

I loved this show up until the end..I was devestatingly heartbroken by Phil Hartmans' death...What really bothered me was that NBC would air it on a Tuesday one week and on a Monday the next and then not air it the following back to airing it on a wednesday that it just got to hard o find it when it was on...I seldom watch tv today because it's mostly crap...I just buy all my tv favs on DVD and watch the tv for the news..Fox news that is...

I loved the Bill McNeal character so much that it made me hate the episodes post-Hartman. However it wasn't so much Max's character that bothered me. It was the way the rest of them reacted to Max. There where so many times I thought Joe should have knocked him out or even Lisa or Dave at least should have not allowed his antics based on the way their characters' were previously. I thought the show would have been AMAZING if they had Hartman, Alexander and Lovitz at the same time from the beginning.