What was that 1980s TV movie/show with an alien news show?

August 17, 2015 7:21 AM

In the late 1980s, I remember seeing something on television that featured some kids picking up a signal/broadcast from outer space. The broadcast contained an alien news show. It was a standard type of news show with male and female aliens at a news desk with an inset in the top corner. The aliens were sort of heavy-set, not your generic, skinny bug-eyed aliens. I don't think it was intended to be scary but it kind of freaked me out as a 7-year old and it has stuck with me to this day.

I think it was a made-for-TV movie rather than an actual show but other than those details, I remember nothing else about it. All my searches over the years have not yielded anything, not even a lead.

posted by lbo to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

It has Christian Bale in it
posted by parmanparman at 7:33 AM on August 17, 2015

Best answer: Possibly the Amazing Stories episode "Fine Tuning".
posted by doctornecessiter at 7:40 AM on August 17, 2015

Response by poster: Well, I think that might be it! I sort of conflated parts of it into one scene but that seems to be it! Definitely has a much different tone watching it thirty years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcT1LVWKvgE
posted by lbo at 7:47 AM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Could you have been watching They Live

That is one god-awful HTML2.0 Site there. Anyway there is a newscast in which it is revealed that these human looking news readers are not at all human.
posted by Gungho at 9:34 AM on August 17, 2015

I first thought of The Great Space Coaster (with alien reporter Gary Gnu).
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:19 AM on August 17, 2015