Mediola

Hot news babes in skin rags: Does sex=ratings? Or is this just too degrading and ultimately an audience turn-off?

I live in Los Angeles, but my wake-up time is not earlier than 7am. So when I read the following story in the L.A. Times by excellent TV reporter Greg Braxton, I was pretty much blown away. Read it, and then I'll have a few thoughts:

"KTLA Morning News" anchor Sharon Tay's seductive gaze from the pages of a men's magazine suggests that the headlines of the day are the last thing on her mind. Bold lipstick accents her prominent lips, and few might disagree that she wears her clothes — what there is of them — well.

a) Hooker? b) News anchor?

But despite posing in various stages of undress in the March issue of Razor magazine, Tay, who anchors the 5 to 7 a.m. edition of the news, insists she has no aspirations to be America's Next Top Model.

"Oh, no, no, NO!" says the petite Tay, shaking her head vigorously. "I'm way too short!"

Now Tay's "fashion" pictorial has revived the debate about the blurring of boundaries between news and entertainment. While some TV newswomen, such as Fox 11's Jillian Barberie and KTLA's Mindy Burbano,

have emphasized sexuality to promote themselves and their newscasts for several years, the emergence of news anchors using magazines and websites to flaunt their physical attributes has heightened concerns about the boundaries between journalism and show business, with academics, news directors and rival anchors denouncing the practice.

In one of the full-page photos of her in Razor — a young men's magazine similar to Maxim and FHM that features scantily clad celebrities — Tay leans against a wall in a tight, backless green outfit that reveals a hint of her rear end. She highlights her cleavage in another photo.

"The pictorial is not Tay's only promotional vehicle. The anchor has a personal website where she touts her "beauty secrets" and health and fitness tips ("Do you want to have a firm butt? A few squats and lunges are great for this 'pow pow' factor"). There is also a Tay photo gallery. Her website bio names Tay as an "in-demand talent for a diverse array of entertainment industry projects," a description absent from her KTLA biography on the station's website, which says that Tay is "always interested in improving her journalist skills."

The pea game: which news channel is conservative?

Late Thanksgiving night, I caught a long-running political talk show on public access cable here in LA. On the panel was Patrick Caddell, who first came to public prominence as President Jimmy Carter's in-house pollster.

Caddell has for quite some time--years--been a regular commentator on MSNBC. I have seen him most often on Chris Matthews' Hardball. Caddell has also recently been acting as an advisor and writer on NBC's The West Wing.

It's worth noting that former Clinton White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers has a similar role on The West Wing, as does Larry O'Donnell, who is MSNBC's Senior Political Analyst. Earlier, O'Donnell was a senior adviser to long-time Democratic New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Does this seem to be some sort of conflict of interest? On the one hand, you can make a fortune writing what has for years been the liberal adventures of President Bartlet for a prime time drama, and at the same time you can be employed by NBC News as a political analyst. What kind of political analyst?

In any case, Caddell, a Democrat, said on the cable show that during the first three weeks of the current war in Iraq, he was told by MSNBC executives that his services would not be needed, because he wasn't sufficiently pro-Bush.

Is this an indication of what NBC News wants to be? Was this a desperate me-too attempt to get Fox viewers to watch MSNBC? They were afraid to broadcast independent voices about a war Americans were fighting?

Here is an indication of the current destruction of NBC News by the people I won't bother mentioning who run GE, NBC, NBC News and MSNBC. This is what I mean when I say the network news departments must be protected by federal governance, not left to be run by amoral morons whose desperation to make a buck outweighs their constitutional responsibility. And they accuse Fox of being biased! Fox leaves no doubt about where they stand--remember, "fair and balanced" is a marketing strategy, not a pledge of objectivity.

I really hope MSNBC becomes a shopping channel, or something equally harmless to our democracy.

Thanks for keeping the Democrats off the air, NBC News, while they were writing pious liberal crap on The West Wing. That sure helped keep us informed about the rationale for and progress of the war.

Dan
Go to DanCooper.tv

Larry Tisch dies at 80: Few did more damage to broadcast news

Appropriately, Laurence A. Tisch died Saturday, Nov. 15, 2003, at Tisch Hospital at the New York University Medical Center. The Tisch brothers (his brother Preston Robert, known as Bob) gave NYU many millions of dollars, and there are several NYU buildings named Tisch, including the Tisch School of the Arts. Tisch also gave $4.5 million dollars to restore the lovely Tisch Children's Zoo in Central Park. He was president of the United Jewish Appeal for a while. You get the point. Tuxedos, cigars, money, money, money.

Now we're going to cut the crap and talk about why it's so hard to get a job in broadcasting these days, why salaries have come down since the 1980's, benefits have been slashed, and huge numbers of jobs have been lost, and people thrown out of work.

In business, Larry Tisch was a bottom feeder. He bought cheap, built value any way he could, and sold for profit. Ethics and values were words he didn't comprehend.

Larry Tisch owned a company called Loews Corp. Loews owned Lorillard, the cigarette company, and Bulova, the watch company. With other acquisitions, including a hotel chain, an insurance firm and an offshore drilling company, Tisch grew Loews' revenue from $100 million in 1970 to more than $3 billion in 10 years. Cigarettes, offshore drilling -- good stuff to lay the groundwork to destroy a broadcast network.

In 1986, CBS was subject to several hostile takeover attempts. William S. Paley, the founder of CBS, was still top dog at that time. Ted Turner took a crack at it, but was fended off. But nothing could stop Tisch. He spent $800 million to buy a 24.9% ownership position in CBS, Inc. Just think about that price. Peanuts. But this was LBO time, and CBS had been weakened by mismanagement.

Tisch somehow pulled the wool over Bill Paley's eyes, and convinced Paley that he, Tisch, was a white knight. Paley actually publicly supported what was a hostile takeover. "I respect and admire him." said Paley at the time. He must have been dropping acid.

Let's Talk Makeup

As part of my process with my media training clients, I always get into makeup and hair. I don't need to explain the importance of your neck-up look.

For those of you in big markets, you've got makeup artists, which as many of you know can be a mixed blessing. Others of you do your own makeup. I've sampled some advertising images that many of you women readers are seeing in current magazines, and I want to throw them up with comments to try to share my thinking about developing your on-camera look.

I should mention that aside from my TV news and production background, during which time I once had the interesting experience of having more than 25 news makeup artists reporting to me, I have done fashion photography professionally in Manhattan, and am an advanced Photoshop user and moderately skillful retoucher. The images you're going to see are scanned from a magazine, which because magazines are printed in tiny color droplets, requires a descreening process to even out the photos. I've made the images very close to the originals, but in some you'll see lines, or hints of the text on the reverse side of the page. So just ignore that, and let's concentrate on the makeup looks. I've rated the makeup jobs WOW, YUK, or WOW with reservations.

I'll have one or two hints along the way (yes, hints! and I'm not Bobbi Brown!) so let's go....

A case in point: Ashleigh Banfield

Watching television on 9/11, among the most memorable reportage was that of Ashleigh Banfield. I had no idea who she was, found her rather grating, and thought her name was a bit much, as were the glasses. Covered in the horrible, horrible white ash, she jammed non-stop, walking and talking, ultimately overcoming my initial feelings of pretension by being "in the moment", and doing what an old boss of mine called "rockin' an' rollin'". She was in the middle of a monumental story, and she was ad libbing, and it was the kind of TV news magic that happens when a huge story breaks.

The facts that her performance that day positioned her as an instant star of a sort, that she became the flavor of the month at MSNBC, that she was given two series to host that were conceptual disasters, and that she couldn't pull them off, are an interesting case study. We don't know the facts behind the scenes, but we can put pieces together. We can wonder if Ashleigh jumped on the train without considering her career strategy, and allowed herself to be "managed" by management. As she moved toward the train wreck that has now occurred, but that can be corrected using my "Three M" strategy, one wonders if she ever questioned whether the shows she was being given had formats that would be successful. It might not have been opportune to turn down a show offer, but once accepted, star talent can work with the executive producer to shape the show into something audience-friendly. The shows Ashleigh was given were utter turn-offs, and reveal the vigilance we must exercise in maneuvering around the often bad decisions of executives.