Stan, Cartman, Kyle, Butters, Jimmy and Token are taping "Super School News", a newscast airing on South Park Elementary's closed-circuit television system. (The footage is accompanied by the tune Yakety Sax.). Over 20 years and nearly 300 episodes later, South Park is still one of the best animated shows on TV. The 122nd episode of the series overall, it originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on November 17, 2004.. 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 show, "Animals Close-Up With a Wide-Angle Lens", which they consider pointless and banal.

They begin to experience weird hallucinations and start wandering through South Park behaving strangely. The news team then pledges to make a program that will be a ratings booster and gain the attention of all students. They then decide to produce a special report that gets cough medicine banned from school. "Quest for Ratings" is the eleventh episode in the eighth season of the American animated television series South Park. Relive the dawn of the South Park era, with legendary episodes of the groundbreaking, Emmy® Award-winning animated classic. 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". Follow everyone's favorite troublemakers—Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny--from the very beginning of their unforgettable adventures. They realize that Craig's show gets such good ratings because most of the school must be high on cough medicine. 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. 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. 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.

With the 2008 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 and Matt Stone's concurrent film, had just been through a long, grueling post-production which left the staff low on energy:[1]. South Park tackling COVID-19 with its first hourlong episode By James Hibberd September 15, 2020 at 02:59 PM EDT The best South Park episodes are those that have, despite the show priding itself on satirising current events, managed to withstand the test of … …

With over 250 episodes under its belt, South Park is one of the most successful and long-running TV comedies -- animated or otherwise -- of all time. They eventually retire to their ideas room, and watch Craig's show with stoned expressions, and find it awesome. 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. Back in the writer's room, they come up with nothing and eventually decide to just "bail".

So, this episode marks a very special time in South Park history, because, this was the first time that we were officially... out of ideas. The pandemic is going down to South Park. "Quest for Ratings" is the eleventh episode in the eighth season of the American animated television series South Park. 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. The 122nd episode of the series overall, it originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on November 17, 2004.

South Park is an American animated television sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for Comedy Central.

Long-running Comedy Central cartoon “South Park” will return Sept. 30 with an hourlong Season 24 premiere about … To get ideas, the boys decide to get high on cough medicine. The set includes brief audio commentaries by Parker and Stone for each episode. When they come around, their notepads contain nothing useful. [2], "South Park: The Complete Eighth Season DVD Review", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quest_for_Ratings&oldid=952881236, Short description is different from Wikidata, Television episode articles with short description for single episodes, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 24 April 2020, at 15:05. "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. South Park Every episode of this critically acclaimed and award-winning show is packed with unforgettable adventures, cutting satire, and hilarious absurdity — from pissed off celebrities to talking towels and crime-fighting kids. To emphasize the importance of good ratings, the AV teacher then suspends Craig from school and requests the removal of his testicles.

The show's sophomoric, yet insightful satire has … The series came from a pair of animated shorts titled The Spirit of Christmas, and was originally developed for the Fox Broadcasting Company.Eventually, Fox refused to air the show, which was later picked up by Comedy Central. Cartman and Jimmy play the leading roles as head anchors, Butters is the entertainment and celebrity reporter, Stan is a field reporter, Token is the meteorologist, and Kyle does sports.