"The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" Honored With Four Daytime Emmy® Nominations

NEW YORK, May 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- "The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" earned four nominations in the 2010-2011 Daytime Emmy^® Awards competition, it was announced today by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS).

"The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" was nominated this year in four categories: "Outstanding Special Class Special," "Outstanding Special Class Writing," "Outstanding Achievement in Technical Direction/Electronic Camera/Video Control" and "Outstanding Achievement in Live & Direct To Tape Sound Mixing."

On October 30, 2010, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert led the 250,000-person-strong "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" on the National Mall in Washington, DC.  In a two-hour live broadcast, the arch-rivals and co-hosts got help making their cases from an all-star cast including Tony Bennett, Sam Waterston, Sheryl Crow, Kid Rock, R2D2, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the first-ever dueling duet between the former Cat Stevens and Mr. Ozzy Osbourne.  As the rally builds to its climax, phobophile Colbert bludgeons Stewart with montage after brutal montage of news-media fear-mongering.  But in the end, Stewart - in a moment of almost unaccountable sincerity - assures the crowds that "we live now in hard times, not end times" and that we can start to overcome our fears by disregarding the news media's "24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator" and simply working together.

"The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" was produced by the Emmy^® and Peabody^® Award-winning "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."

The Daytime Emmy Awards will be presented in two ceremonies.  The first, primarily for creative arts categories, will take place on June 17 in Los Angeles.  The Daytime Emmy Awards telecast, primarily for the main programming categories, will take place June 19 in Las Vegas.

Production credits for "The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" include Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as executive producers/hosts, Rory Albanese, Josh Lieb and Tom Purcell as executive producers, Kahane Cooperman, Meredith Bennett and Richard Dahm as co-executive producers, Chuck O'Neil as director, Jill Katz and Chris McShane as producers, Steve Bodow and Barry Julien as head writers and Hillary Kun, Steve Bodow, Tanya Michnevich Bracco, Jennifer Flanz, Emily Lazar, Adam Lowitt and Jim Margolis as supervising producers.

COMEDY CENTRAL, the only all-comedy network, currently is seen in more than 98 million homes nationwide.  COMEDY CENTRAL is owned by, and is a registered trademark of, Comedy Partners, a wholly-owned division of Viacom Inc.'s (NYSE: VIA and VIA.B) MTV Networks.  COMEDY CENTRAL's Internet address is www.comedycentral.com.  For up-to-the-minute and archival press information and photographs visit Press Central, COMEDY CENTRAL's press Web site at www.comedycentral.com/press.

MTV Networks, a division of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), is one of the world's leading creators of entertainment content, with brands that engage and connect diverse audiences across television, online, mobile, games, virtual worlds and consumer products.  The company's portfolio spans more than 150 television channels and 400 digital media properties worldwide, and includes MTV, VH1, CMT, Logo, Harmonix, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nick Jr., TeenNick, AddictingGames, Neopets, COMEDY CENTRAL, SPIKE, TV Land, Atom, GameTrailers and Xfire.

SOURCE COMEDY CENTRAL Corporate Communications