What do real anchorwomen think of 'Anchorwoman'?
A bikini model's reality gig broadcasting TV news disturbs female anchors.
By Eric Deggans, Times TV/Media Critic
Published August 23, 2007
On TV
Anchorwoman
Airs at 8 p.m. Wednesdays on WTVT-Ch. 13
Update: 'Anchorwoman' gets axed after one airing
They looked as if someone had just announced a death in the family. Or told them their jobs were being moved to Mexico.
But this small, mostly female gathering of news anchors had experienced something only a bit less jarring: a screening of the first episode of Fox's latest reality TV nightmare, Anchorwoman.
They perused the story of a bikini model and World Wrestling Entertainment star enlisted to serve as the anchor at a small Texas TV station with no previous training and few qualifications.
They were seriously angry.
"It just made me sad on so many levels," said Martha Hunn, an anchor from WBTW in Myrtle Beach, S.C. "It plays to every stereotype about anchors - that it's all about the hair and makeup and looks and all you do is sit in front of a camera and read. . . . I was really sad about the leadership of that station; to take everything we do and - I hate to use this word - bastardize it."
Carolyn Murray, a news anchor at WCBD in Charleston, S.C., was even more blunt: "This is slapstick comedy that happens to be set inside a building that once served as some kind of news organization."
Hunn and Murray were among a group of TV journalists who came to St. Petersburg from around the world to attend a seminar this week on sharpening their anchor abilities at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns the St. Petersburg Times.
Fox's Anchorwoman seemed to mock the very skills they had gathered to hone, showing third-place KYTX in tiny Tyler, Texas, welcoming blond beauty Lauren Jones in a transparent bid to spark viewership.
In Wednesday's debut, Jones was shown working out with supermodel-pretty friends before her arrival, dropping priceless lines such as "I don't have 14 years of journalism experience . . . but I've always wanted to do it."
Later, Jones shows up for her first day at work in low-cut, leopard-skin top and short red miniskirt, prompting the station's news director to ask, "Which of your favorite news anchors is dressed like this?"
Soon the station's 5 p.m. anchor - who also produces the newscast - confronts the news director, asking, "Is that what we're telling our viewers, that I'm a swimsuit model, too?"
Feeding stereotypes
Such grousing might seem defensive to those who have always assumed a bit of fluff was part of the news anchor's job description, but Poynter faculty member Jill Geisler noted that just 30 years ago few women worked in TV news and most had to fight the notion that their looks landed them their jobs.
"There's a real pain when women watch this," said Geisler, a former anchor and producer who recalled starting her career at a time when women didn't even appear in textbooks about jobs in TV news. "We didn't see a guy from the WWE anchoring in a tank top. It's just hurtful - unnecessarily hurtful."
But when I met Jones during a Los Angeles press party in July, she was confident that her 30-day tryout in Tyler was enough preparation to spark a career as a serious news broadcaster.
"I guess I'm constantly fighting the stereotype about being a bikini model and how a bikini model can't be smart and doesn't have brains," she said, greeting reporters in a miniskirted, seersucker suit with a plunging neckline that didn't do much to make her case as a serious, professional newscaster.
"Sometimes, looks can be deceiving," she said. "It wasn't like they were throwing someone with no experience in an anchor chair."
Actually, it was exactly like that.
The bio circulated by the network for Jones lists stints as a "Barker Beauty" on CBS's game show The Price Is Right, honors as a former Miss New York and top prize in a national modeling contest held by Seventeen magazine. She also touts a degree from New York's Parsons School of Design.
Reporting, writing and journalism experience? Not so much.
The opening episode plays up this friction, with station officials throwing Jones in front of a camera almost from the moment she enters the station. Later, the news director announces a new segment called "Word of the Day," which seems designed to force his novice anchor to pronounce difficult words on live television.
Perhaps worst of all, astute viewers are left to wonder who is actually covering the news in this community, as KYTX's tiny staff runs around, trying to get their bombshell broadcaster ready for air without throwing all their journalistic credibility out the window.
Cynicism, rather than hilarity, ensues.
"All I could think of was Pamela Anderson," Hunn said. "What happens when she has to cover breaking news?"
Actors in anchor chair
To be sure, TV news has waltzed up to this line many times. Actor and talk show host Jillian Barberie started her career in local news, reading the weather in Los Angeles - a task often given to attractive, female nonmeteorologists in that market.
NYPD Blue co-star Andrea Thompson had a brief, unsuccessful run as an anchor on CNN Headline News, while Florence Henderson in 1999 co-anchored a news/talk show that aired briefly at 9 a.m. on NBC called Later Today. Some local TV stations have held open-call auditions to find weather forecasters, or hired former contestants from reality shows such as Survivor.
Even local TV newspeople such as Bay News 9's Jennifer Holloway can cite experience in beauty pageants and modeling in addition to their journalism experience.
"Modeling and pageants were a great way to pay the bills in college; both helped me with being confident in public . . . but neither truly prepared me for the anchor chair," Holloway, a former Miss Georgia, wrote in an e-mail to the St. Petersburg Times. "Studying journalism, voice coaching and completing three internships are what prepared me for my news career."
Still, it is small wonder that this button-pushing exercise reportedly doubled ratings for the Texas station and has already brought journalism job offers for Jones, including at KYTX.
Who knows what might happen if Fox's reality show takes off?
"I would like to continue to pursue (anchoring) and modeling," Jones said. "I don't see why a model can't also be a news anchor . . . on weekends, or at night, or something."
Eric Deggans can be reached at (727) 893-8521 or deggans@sptimes.com. See his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/media.