Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Lights, Camera, Lipstick

Has anyone else but me noticed that the news game has been overrun by women lately? Last night, I'm watching one of the local newscasts, and there are two women anchoring. For the top story they throw it out to...another woman. None of the channels here are "chick-free" at the anchor desk. In fact, I'm much more likely to see an all-gal newscast then to see a couple of dudes go back and forth. What happened?

If you took the average woman and gave her a quiz on current events, I'd bet the mortgage that her score would be closer to zero than it would to 100. So why are we inundated  by female news personalities all of a sudden? The nightly news has become much less of a re-cap of the day's events and more of a "watching out for me" mentality (to borrow the motto of another local news outlet). A story on a family that is filing for bankruptcy isn't news to me, but a feature designed to make us feel something. There! Feeling something! Maybe that's it. As the news becomes less about the news and more about getting you to "feel something" maybe it's thought that a woman can deliver the goods better than a man can.

Or maybe it simply boils down to serving the hottest dish to read the teleprompter scroll because the prettier the gal, the more of the actual people who watch the news (guys) will tune in. Sometimes the obvious answers apply.

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