For English speakers of a certain age, film at 11 is a slang phrase means “You’ll hear the details later.” It’s a reference to the days before 24-hour cable news, when newscasters would read headlines during the day promoting the 11 p.m. broadcast, when viewers would get the whole story, including video. It was famously parodied in Kentucky Fried Movie. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Film at 11”
The other day I emailed a friend that I had some news to share with her but I didn’t have enough time to tell her what it was. So I wrote film at 11 and I realized there’s a whole generation doesn’t know what that is. It doesn’t know and not only do they not know what it is they have to have it defined in Urban Dictionary.
I went to Urban Dictionary, which explained that before there was YouTube and things like that, there was the late night local news. And announcers would come on during the commercial breaks of primetime TV shows and say whatever would get viewers to stay on that channel and watch the news. So they’d describe something that would intrigue the viewer’s curiosity, then say, film at 11.
The actual film shown at 11 rarely lives up to the hyped expectations. I can’t believe I was having to read a definition of that on Urban Dictionary. That’s going to happen more and more, Grant. A squirrel in a top hat, film at 11. It was 10 p.m. where I grew up, but still the same principle.
Really? All right. A lot of people trace the jokes about this to the Kentucky Fried movie. Google that. I haven’t. Yeah. I haven’t watched it. They use that kind of construction. Oh, they do. That newsiness is a way of kind of making fun of the news business. Oh, interesting. Film at 11.
Right. And now it’s filmed 24-7, right? Yeah. Right. Film in just two minutes, and then we’re going to run it ad nauseum for the next 48 hours. And then fake news in your Facebook feed. 877-929-9673.
