Naked News combines journalism with sensuality

CHUM/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.

History

Naked News was conceived in 1998 and debuted in 1999 as a web-based news service and 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, Ireland, and even France (dubbed into French).

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 is controversial as the tragic events that prompted clothed reporting are almost always events that occurred in the Western world. Events like the 2005 Tsunami 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.

The Naked News 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 1999, 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 Jesse Raphael, and numerous appearances on Entertainment Tonight and ET Insider] Newspapers and Magazine, [T.V. Guide, Playboy] and as guests on multiple radio shows including Howard Stern.