Naked News

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Naked News
Image:nakednewslogo.png
Genre News, nudity
Created by Fernando Pereira, Kirby Stasyna
Directed by Steven Shehori
Country of origin Flag of Canada Canada
Language(s) English
Production
Location(s) Toronto, Ontario
Running time 60 minutes
Broadcast
Picture format wmv
Original airing December 1999
External links
Official website
IMDb profile

Naked News, billing itself as "the program with nothing to hide", is a subscription website featuring a real television newscast prepared in Toronto. The 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, most viewers are men. The male version ceased production on 31 October 2007.

Naked News also aired briefly as a late night television series on Citytv Toronto.

Contents

[edit] History

Naked News was conceived by Fernando Pereira and Kirby Stasyna and debuted in December 1999[1] as a web-based news service featuring an all-female cast. It began with only one anchor, Victoria Sinclair, who is still with the program which has currently grown to 10 female anchors, plus guest anchors. The website was popularized entirely by word of mouth, and quickly became an internet meme. During the height of its popularity, the website was receiving over 6 million hits per month. Part of the large amounts of web traffic in the site's early days was because the entire newscast could be viewed for free and supported by advertising. By 2002, after the crash of Internet advertising, only one news segment could be viewed freely, and by 2004, no free content remained on the website. As of 2008, a nudity-free version of Naked News is available to non-subscribers. The UK channel Sumo TV briefly showed episodes of Naked News, while Playboy One, a free-to-view channel in the UK, currently broadcasts the show at 10:00pm Mondays-Thursdays.

A male version of the show was created in 2001 to parallel the female version, but has ceased production as it did not enjoy the female version's popularity and fame. Although it was originally targeted towards female viewers (at one point said to be 30% of the website's audience), the male show later promoted itself as news from a gay perspective.

In January 2006, Naked News Japan was launched as a joint venture between Naked News owner eGalaxy and Sunrise Corp, a seller of goods and services over the Internet. Due to Japanese broadcasting laws, the presenters currently only strip to their underwear, although the producers have indicated they hope to go further in the future.

[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 medium 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 female anchors as of May 2008 are:

  1. Katherine Curtis (since 2008)
  2. Christine Kerr (since 2005)
  3. Michelle Pantoliano (since 2002) – Former TV broadcaster from New York City.
  4. Sandrine Renard (since 2001)
  5. Victoria Sinclair (1999–2001, 2002-present) – The first NN reporter, she originally performed solo before additional news anchors were added.
  6. Lily Kwan (since 2001)
  7. Erica Stevens (2002–2006, 2007-present)
  8. Valentina Taylor (since 2007)
  9. April Torres (since 2003)
  10. Roxanne West (since 2001)

Past female anchors are:

  1. Lisa Benton (2006)
  2. Devon Calwell (2000–2001) – At age 19, she was the youngest cast member.
  3. Diane Foster (2000–2001)
  4. Gretchen Frazier (2001–2002)
  5. Gia Gomez (2003, 2005–2006)
  6. Kelli Graham (2002–2003)
  7. Kaye Grant (2001–2002)
  8. Ashley Jenning (2003–2005)
  9. Athena King (2001–2003, 2005) – a.k.a. "Athena the Greek".
  10. Yukiko Kimura (2005–2007)
  11. Samantha Page (2003–2005)
  12. Alex Pantos (2006–2007)
  13. Brooke Roberts (2001–2002)
  14. Carmen Russo (2000–2002, 2004) – At age 42, she was the oldest cast member. She is unrelated to the Italian model Carmen Russo.
  15. Whitney Saint-John (2006–2007)
  16. Erin Sherwood (2000–2003)
  17. Cameron Shore (2005–2006)
  18. Holly Weston (1999–2001, 2002–2004) – She continued on the show throughout her pregnancy.
  19. Sarah Winters (2002–2003)
  20. Allyson Jones
Naked News at Toronto Pride Parade 2007
Naked News at Toronto Pride Parade 2007

Past male anchors are:

  1. Enza Anderson
  2. Pedro Cavallo
  3. Jeremy Chase (since 2004)
  4. Dale Danforth
  5. Billy Prescott
  6. Lucas Tyler (since 2001) – The first male anchor of the show, now also producer and director, said to bear a strong resemblance to NBC newsman Matt Lauer.
  7. Matt Waterman
  8. Joshua Holt (2001–2004) – Recently announced he was gay in the pages of The Advocate magazine.
  9. Jack Lange (2004)
  10. Malcolm Matisse
  11. Cole McQuade (2004)
  12. Warren Michaels (2001)
  13. Robert Milan (2001–2002)
  14. Raoul Santos (2001–2004)
  15. Johnny Saputo
  16. Derek Shaw
  17. Brock Stern (2003–2004)
  18. Brendan Tanner (2002–2004)

Current writers are:

  1. Greg Preece
  2. Sean K. Robb
  3. Steven Shehori – Also a director

[edit] Similar shows

The initial success of the show's concept spawned several imitators, mostly on the internet, but also including The Daily Flash, a news program on Playboy Channel.

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, except the anchors keep their bottom underwears on.
  • Radio Tango – Oslo, Norway radio station once featured stripping female weather readers on their website.

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 by the name "Noodie News" appears in Canadian Margaret Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx and Crake.

A Russian news/comedy program called 600 Seconds was launched in 2000.[1]

Počasíčko (diminutive of "weather") was Czech TV Nova's past-10PM featurette launched in January 1998 where a nude woman (or occasionally, a man) got dressed in clothing appropriate for the next day's weather forecast.[2] This was discontinued after several years and returned as web-only in February 2007. When Nova launched a new online portal in May 2008, it included a "Red News" section causing controversy; asked about the Naked News, they denied securing license and stressed Počasíčko's primacy.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Naked News Fully Covered, Online Journalism Review 2001/2
  2. ^ Jan Čulík: More Moribund Manoeuvering, Central Europe Review 1999

[edit] External links

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