The Onion is launching a news network:

The weekly is launching a video newscast dubbed Onion News Network, or ONN, a 24-hour fake news net marketing itself as, “faster, harder, scarier and all-knowing.” “Our competitors are MSNBC and CNN,” said Onion prexy Sean Mills, distancing the new network from the fake news genre so successfully explored by Comedy Central and “Saturday Night Live.” “Those are parody shows, and this is serious news,” he said. “There’s no studio audience, and no one’s in on the joke. What we are trying to create is a broadcast-quality newscast on the Internet.” Starting Tuesday, ONN began releasing segments on Theonion.com. Unlike Viacom, which demanded that clips from “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show” be taken down from YouTube, the Onion will encourage fans to disseminate ad-supported clips around the Web.