The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are both among the best and most popular parody news TV shows out there. Being a spinoff of the former, the latter has gone out of its way to distinguish itself from its predecessor in many ways, and it has succeeded tremendously. The Colbert Report's shtick is that unlike The Daily Show, which basically amounts to Jon Stewart and friends taking digs at politics and news media, the Report actually appears to take place in a semi-fictional universe. Colbert himself, after all, is a very different person in "real life" from the persona he has established on the show.

Colbert finds great success with this approach. Unlike most other forms of parody news, including The Daily Show, the Report has established a world of its own that's every bit as entertaining as the obligatory news media potshots expected of the genre. It's a kind of warped reality where Colbert's character is ostensibly God, bears are Satan, and other things are made up on-the-fly. Some of the show's humor actually stems from the confusion over where "reality" ends and where the show's universe begins.

Overall, The Colbert Report is both enjoyable as a parody news program and as a fictional comedy series in its own right.