"Quest for Ratings" is the eleventh episode in the eighth season of the American animated television series '' South Park''. The 122nd episode of the series overall, it originally aired on

Comedy Central Comedy Central is an American basic cable channel owned by Paramount Global through its network division's MTV Entertainment Group unit, based in Manhattan. The channel is geared towards young adults aged 18–34 and carries comedy programmin ...

in the United States on November 17, 2004. In the episode, the boys produce their own morning news show on the school's closed-circuit television station and are immediately caught up in an intense competition for ratings.

Plot

Stan, Cartman, Kyle, Butters, Jimmy and Token are taping "Super School News", a

newscast News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting various news events and other information via television, radio, or the internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either produced locally in a radio studio or telev ...

airing on South Park Elementary's closed-circuit television system. Cartman and Jimmy play the leading roles as head anchors, Butters is the

entertainment Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have developed over thousa ...

and

celebrity Celebrity is a condition of fame and broad public recognition of a person or group as a result of the attention given to them by mass media. An individual may attain a celebrity status from having great wealth, their participation in sports ...

reporter, Stan is a field reporter, Token is the

meteorologist A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists in research, while t ...

, and Kyle does

sport Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...

s. However, after their news program airs, their teacher Mr. Meryl tells them that they did horribly in the ratings, trailing far behind Craig's

home video Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...

show, "Animals Close-Up With a

Wide-Angle Lens In photography and cinematography, a wide-angle lens refers to a lens whose focal length is substantially smaller than the focal length of a normal lens for a given film plane. This type of lens allows more of the scene to be included in the ...

", which they consider pointless and banal. (The footage is accompanied by the tune ''

Yakety Sax "Yakety Sax" is a pop novelty instrumental jointly composed by James Q. "Spider" Rich and Boots Randolph. Saxophonist Randolph popularized the selection in his 1963 recording, which reached number 35 on the pop charts. Comedian Benny Hill later ...

''.) The news team then pledges to make a program that will be a ratings booster and gain the attention of all students. They rename the show "Sexy Action School News" and add flashy elements (in a parody of various infotainment shows), including random "Panda Madness Minutes" in which the newscasters spontaneously dance with

pandas Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS) is a controversial hypothetical diagnosis for a subset of children with rapid onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or tic disorders. Sy ...

. However, nothing seems to work; although they beat Craig's original series, they fall far behind his new show, "Animals Close-Up With a Wide-Angle Lens Wearing Hats". To get ideas, the boys decide to get high on cough medicine. They begin to experience weird hallucinations and start wandering through South Park behaving strangely. They eventually retire to their ideas room, and watch Craig's show with stoned expressions, and find it awesome. When they come around, their notepads contain nothing useful. Then Stan realizes that the video they were watching all night while under the influence of cough medicine—and concluded was the 'greatest show ever'—was Craig's show. They realize that Craig's show gets such good ratings because most of the school must be high on cough medicine. They then decide to produce a special report that gets cough medicine banned from school. Soon after, the ratings drop and Craig's show is cancelled, as the children are no longer high and therefore no longer enjoy the show. To emphasize the importance of good ratings, the AV teacher then suspends Craig from school and requests the removal of his testicles. Satisfied with their results, the "Sexy Action School News" team discovers the curse of a successful show: each subsequent episode has to be just as good. Back in the writer's room, they come up with nothing and eventually decide to just "bail".

Production

With the 2006 DVD release of the eighth season, many of the audio commentaries revealed that much of the lack of ideas was because '' Team America: World Police'',

Trey Parker Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III (born October 19, 1969) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, and composer. He is known for co-creating ''South Park'' (since 1997) and '' The Book of Mormon'' (2011) with his creative partner Matt Stone. ...

and

Matt Stone Matthew Richard Stone (born May 26, 1971) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, and composer. He is known for co-creating ''South Park'' (since 1997) and ''The Book of Mormon'' (2011) with his creative partner Trey Parker. Stone was interes ...

's concurrent film, had just been through a long, grueling post-production which left the staff low on energy:

Home media

"Quest for Ratings", along with the thirteen other episodes from ''South Park''s eighth season, was released on a three-disc DVD set in the United States on August 29, 2006. The set includes brief audio commentaries by Parker and Stone for each episode.

References

External links

"Quest for Ratings"
Full episode at South Park Studios * {{DEFAULTSORT:Quest for Ratings American news parodies South Park (season 8) episodes Cats in entertainment Dogs in popular culture Giant pandas in popular culture Television episodes about mammals Television episodes about drugs Television episodes about journalism