Naked News
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| Naked News | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Genre | News, Erotica |
| Created by | Fernando Pereira, Kirby Stasyna |
| Directed by | Steven Shehori |
| Country of origin |  Canada |
| Original language | English |
| Production | |
| Production locations | Toronto, Ontario |
| Running time | 60 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Release | 2000 |
Naked News, billing itself as "the program with nothing to hide", is a subscription website featuring a real television newscast prepared in Toronto. 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, most viewers are men.
Naked News also aired briefly as a late night television series on Citytv Toronto.
History
Naked News was conceived by Fernando Pereira and Kirby Stasyna and debuted in 2000 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. Currently a nudity-free version of Naked News is available to non-subscribers. The UK channel Sumo TV briefly showed episodes of naked news before presumably being made to stop. [citation needed]
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.
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 current female anchors are:
- Christine Kerr (since 2005)
- Yukiko Kimura (since 2005)
- Athena King - a.k.a. "Athena the Greek". (since 2001)
- Lily Kwan (since 2001)
- Michelle Pantoliano - Former TV broadcaster from New York City. (since 2002)
- Alex Pantos (since 2006)
- Sandrine Renard (since 2001)
- Victoria Sinclair - The first NN reporter, she originally performed solo before additional news anchors were added. (1999-2001, 2002-present)
- Erica Stevens (2002-2006, 2007-present)
- April Torres (since 2003)
- Roxanne West (since 2001)
Past female anchors are:
- Gia Gomez (2003, 2005-2006)
- Ashley Jenning (2003-2005)
- Samantha Page (2003-2005)
- Whitney Saint-John (2006-2007)
- Cameron Shore (2005-2006)
- Lisa Benton
- Devon Calwell - At age 19, she was the youngest cast member.
- Diane Foster
- Gretchen Frazier
- Kelli Graham
- Kaye Grant
- Allyson Jones
- Brooke Roberts
- Carmen Russo - At age 42, she was the oldest cast member. She is unrelated to the Italian model of the same name.
- Erin Sherwood
- Holly Weston - She continued on the show throughout her pregnancy.
- Sarah Winters
The current male anchors are:
- Pedro Cavallo
- Jeremy Chase
- Dale Danforth
- Billy Prescott
- Enza Supermodel
- 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.
- Matt Waterman
Past male anchors are:
- Joshua Holt - Recently announced he was gay in the pages of The Advocate magazine.
- Jack Lange
- Malcolm Matisse
- Cole McQuade
- Warren Michaels
- Robert Milan
- Raoul Santos
- Johnny Saputo
- Derek Shaw
- Brock Stern
- Brendan Tanner
Current writers are:
- Greg Preece
- Sean K. Robb
- Steven Shehori - Also a director
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 novel Oryx and Crake.
Russian program 600 Seconds preceded Naked News by a few years.
External links
- Naked News website Contains adult content
- Naked News Daily Male Contains adult content
- Naked News at Internet Movie Database