This is the second deal The Onion's made in cable television; it signed with Comedy Central to bring its Onion Sports Network to the air a few months ago.
Like Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, ONN will parody local affiliate news and at-a-desk editorial programming on 24-hour news networks. The Onion is known for a harsher and more absurd style of comedy, though, so don't expect the new series to step on Stewart's toes if it actually makes it on the air.
Here's how Executive Producer Will Graham describes it to The New York Times: "If you look at CNN.com or FoxNews.com, and you see these little snippets there, now we’re going to give you the whole network, and make it the most authentic, aggressive, snarky, in-your-face news show out there."
Onion News Network is already the moniker of the fake news channel behind the absurd videos published regularly on The Onion's website, but Graham says that the new show won't be a series of derivative snippets. We've embedded a subject-appropriate example of the web series below in case you've been missing out, though.
The Onion News Network: "Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of 'Friendster' Civilization"