Naked News
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Naked News, billing itself as "the program with nothing to hide", is a subscription website featuring a real television newscast prepared in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The male and female anchors read the news fully nude or strip as they present their news segments. Naked News TV is its offshoot pay-per-view or subscription service. Regardless of the gender of the anchor, the male demographic is particularly high for the show.
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[edit] History
Naked News debuted in June 2000 as a web-based news service featuring an all-female cast. The website was popularized entirely by word of mouth, and quickly became an internet meme. During the height of its popularity, the website was promoted as receiving over 6 million hits per month. This number did not refer to the number of actual subscribers of the site, which was believed to be vastly lower. Part of the large amounts of web traffic in the site's early days was because the entire newscast could be viewed for free, though subscribers got access to a higher bandwidth feed and other extras. By 2002, only one news segment could be viewed freely, and by 2004, no free content remained on the website.
A male version of the show was created in 2001 to parallel the female version. It does not however enjoy the same popularity and fame, and there are currently more female than male anchors. Although it was originally targeted towards female viewers (at one point said to be 30% of the website's audience), the male show now openly promotes itself as news from a gay perspective.
Its offshoot Naked News TV aired as a late-night television series on the Toronto television station Citytv, and (until February 2005) on British satellite channel Get Lucky TV. The show is or has been available on pay-per-view or by subscription in various markets in the U.S., Australia, Canada, the UK, Republic of Ireland, and even France (dubbed into French). The male television edition can be seen on OUTtv and HARD on PrideVision in Canada.
[edit] Opinions of Naked News
Naked News has earned some praise from established journalists for its coverage of international news items not often covered in mainstream news media. Victoria Sinclair, the first NN announcer and one of only two with journalism experience, has also received some praise for her newsreading ability.
Naked News has generated some controversy among the media, and even within its own staff. Critics charge that the nudity is little more than a gimmick that trivializes important news events, while proponents argue that such gimmicks exist on most television news already; nudity is just a particularly successful one. Sinclair herself has questioned the appropriateness of disrobing while reading of tragic events. She did not undress when she read the news of the death of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, nor for the September 11, 2001 program (which was not aired). The anchors have all since continued the tradition of reading tragic events fully clothed. This too has proven to be controversial as observers have complained that stories that warranted "fully clothed" coverage were, in fact, Western or "Eurocentric" tragedies, while disasters happening elsewhere in the world were deemed "less important". Events like the 2005 Indian Ocean Earthquake were reported in the nude, while news of the London bombings as well as all follow-up reports and interviews done in the following days, were done fully clothed both in studio and in London. Since then, the producers of Naked News have instituted a basic rule in this area: No disrobing during any news coverage of a major tragedy anywhere in the world.
[edit] Cast
Most of the show's announcers have been recruited through classified ads in alternative newspapers in Toronto. As such, most of the show's crew comes from the Toronto area. The show features occasional on-the-street interviews by topless newscasters, which are made possible by Ontario's Topfree equality laws. Since the show's inception in 2000, there has been much turnover among the newscasters, and many guest anchors. The female announcers have been featured in almost every media including television (CBS Sunday Morning, The Today Show, The View, Sally Jessy Raphaël, and numerous appearances on Entertainment Tonight and ET Insider) newspapers and magazines, (TV Guide, Playboy) and as guests on multiple radio shows including Howard Stern.
The current female anchors are:
- Victoria Sinclair - The first NN reporter, she originally performed solo before additional news anchors were added. Sinclair left the show in Sept. 2001, and returned in Nov. 2002
- April Torres
- Roxanne West
- Sandrine Renard
- Lily Kwan
- Michelle Pantoliano - Former radio & TV broadcaster from New York City.
- Christine Kerr
- Yukiko Kimura
- Lisa Benton
- Alex Pantos
- Whitney Saint-John
Past female anchors are:
- Gia Gomez
- Athena King - a.k.a. "Athena the Greek".
- Ashley Jenning
- Samantha Page
- Cameron Shore
- Erica Stevens
- Diane Foster
- Brooke Roberts
- Holly Weston - She continued on the show throughout her pregnancy.
- Carmen Russo - At age 42, she was the oldest cast member. She is unrelated to the Italian model of the same name.
- Devon Calwell - At age 19, she was the youngest cast member.
- Erin Sherwood
- Allyson Jones
- Gretchen Frazier
- Kaye Grant
- Kelli Graham
- Sarah Winters
The current male anchors are:
- Matt Waterman
- Dale Danforth
- Jeremy Chase
- Malcolm Matisse
- Lucas Tyler - The first male anchor of the show, now also producer and director, said to bear a strong resemblance to NBC newsman Matt Lauer.
Past male anchors are:
- Jack Lange
- Joshua Holt - Recently announced he was gay in the pages of The Advocate magazine.
- Cole McQuade
- Warren Michaels
- Robert Milan
- Raoul Santos
- Johnny Saputo
- Derek Shaw
- Brock Stern
- Brendan Tanner
Current writers are:
- Greg Preece
- Steven Shehori - Also a director
[edit] Imitators
The initial success of the show's concept spawned several imitators, mostly on the websites, but also including "The Daily Flash", a news program on Playboy TV.
Among the imitators on the internet:
- Comédie! - In 2001, this French cable TV network ran a series promos featuring males and females casually undressing as they read jokes. In 2006, they copied the NN format in its entirety in a striptease newscast called Les Nuz.
- Radio Tango - Oslo, Norway radio station once featured stripping female weather readers on their website.
- Počasíčko - A 2002 featurette on Czech television network Nova TV where a nude woman (or occasionally, a man) gets dressed in clothing appropriate for that day's weather forecast.
A comedic "precursor" to this concept occurred in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in which Terry Jones began performing a striptease while giving a fast-paced rundown of economic news.
A very similar phenomenon (going by the name "Noodie News") appears in Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, a work of fiction.
See also Svetlana Pesotskaya.
[edit] External links
- Naked News website Contains adult content
- Naked News Male Edition Contains adult content
- Naked News at Internet Movie Database
