The Newsroom is a Canadian television comedy-drama series which ran on CBC Television in the 1996–97, 2003–04 and 2004–05 seasons. A two-hour television movie, Escape from the Newsroom, was broadcast in 2002. The show is set in the newsroom of a television station which is never officially named, but is generally understood to be based on CBC's own Toronto affiliate CBLT. Inspired by American series The Larry Sanders Show and similar to such earlier series as the British Drop the Dead Donkey and the Australian Frontline, the series mined a dark vein of comedy from the political machinations and the sheer incompetence of the people involved in producing the fictional City Hour, the station's nightly newscast. History Season 1 The Newsroom was not originally intended to be an ongoing series. Its first season of thirteen episodes, broadcast in 1996–97, led to critical acclaim but no immediate follow-up commissioning. Following the end of The Newsroom, creator Ken Finkleman produced three different short-run series for the CBC, More Tears, Foolish Heart and Foreign Objects, all of which included George Findlay, the central character of The Newsroom, as a linking character. A Findlay-like character with a different surname had also appeared in Finkleman's pre-Newsroom series Married Life. Findlay was also revived in the later HBO Canada series Good Dog and Good God. Season 2 As none of the subsequent series after the initial season of The Newsroom were as well received by the public or by critics as the original show, the CBC began to seek a new set of Newsroom episodes. Escape from the Newsroom, which included a fourth wall-breaking plot digression in which the characters directly addressed the idea of reviving the series, was meant partly as a sarcastic response to that request. However, Finkleman ultimately agreed to produce 13 new episodes, which were broadcast after a six-year hiatus since the initial series, in the winter of 2004. The last four episodes of the second season were shot as a mockumentary. Season 3 A third season of The Newsroom, consisting of six episodes, was broadcast on CBC beginning on February 14, 2005. In the United States, The Newsroom aired on PBS stations. All three seasons and Escape from the Newsroom are available on DVD. Followup The series drew some renewed media attention in 2011, when Aaron Sorkin announced that his new 2012 series, set in the newsroom of a cable news