Comedy Central is quickly becoming the fake-news channel. Best known for the critically celebrated “Daily Show,” the network now launches “Dog Bites Man” (9:30 p.m., Comedy Central), a loosely scripted improvisational show following a crew of ersatz reporters.

Television talking heads have provided fodder for farcical lampoons for decades. From the dim and pompous Ted Baxter of “Mary Tyler Moore” fame to Will Ferrell’s “Anchorman: The Legend of Rod Burgundy,” America loves laughing at a man holding a microphone.

Set in Spokane, the fictional KHBX news team rushes around town covering important stories like “Do Sneeze Guards Really Work?” and other consumer fluff.

Matt Walsh stars as reporter Kevin Beekin. Walsh is a veteran of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe and starred in the 1998 Comedy Central show of the same name. He has also appeared on the “Cops” parody “Reno 911” and in big-screen comedies, including “Old School,” “Bad Santa” and “Starsky & Hutch.”

“Dog Bites Man” was not available for review.

¢ “American Masters” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) repeats the 1987 documentary “George Gershwin Remembered.” The film uses family photos, early home movies and rehearsal and performance footage to recall Gershwin’s years as a Tin Pan Alley composer (“Swanee”), his Broadway years (“Funny Face” and “Of Thee I Sing”) and his efforts to infuse jazz and popular idioms into “serious” music, resulting in the compositions “Rhapsody in Blue” and “An American in Paris.” He would win the first Pulitzer Prize for music in 1935, the year of his opera “Porgy and Bess.” Within two years, he would be dead of a brain tumor at only 39.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Scheduled on “Dateline” (7 p.m., NBC): candid cameras and sordid deeds.

¢ Cat Deeley hosts two episodes of “So You Think You Can Dance” (7 p.m. and 8 p.m., Fox).

¢ Elle is taken hostage on “Criminal Minds” (8 p.m., CBS).

¢ Michael, Sawyer and Jin come ashore after the destruction of their raft on “Lost” (8 p.m., ABC).

¢ On two episodes of “Law & Order” (NBC), a soccer mom becomes a murder suspect (8 p.m.), a religious desecration ends in death (9 p.m.).

¢ Beach denizens decamp for Los Angeles on the reality series “The Hills” (8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m., MTV).

¢ A game turns deadly on “CSI: NY” (9 p.m., CBS).

¢ The boys set out to lose a baseball game on “South Park” (9 p.m., Comedy Central).