All Blog Posts from Public Eye

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I post to bury “Anchorwoman,” not to praise it.

According to trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable, the Fox reality program featuring a former bikini model/wrestling diva playing anchor for a month has been cancelled. After one episode. And replaced by repeats of a show that was barely watchable in its first run. As reported Thursday evening:

In the tradition of highly promoted flops that lasted just a single episode like ABC’s Emily’s Reasons Why Not last year, Fox canceled Anchorwoman, a network spokesperson confirmed Thursday afternoon.

The show -- about a former model and World Wrestling Entertainment performer who becomes a news anchor -- debuted Wednesday night to a miniscule 1.0 rating in the adult 18-49 demo.

The network will air repeats of Til Death in its place for at least the next three weeks.

A reassuring anecdote for your weekend: that highly-promoted pulchritudeand belittling the media – two sure fire crowd pleasers you’d think – aren’t quite the formula for success that Fox envisioned it to be.

We had a bit of fun with the CNN-YouTube debate last month keeping track of how many times CNN decided they’d toss in a quote-unquote story about the fact that the night’s debate was “groundbreaking” and “first of its kind.” (Though not as much fun as Billiam the Snowman, who seems to be trying to parlay his appearance on the debate into a role as a snowy kingmaker.)

It got messy. On the day of the debate, there were 117 mentions of it on CNN and its sibling CNN Headline News combined.

As I wrote while tracking the mentions that day: “CNN owes its viewers more than an 8 hour pre-game show during their broadcast day … Today’s cable news hucksterism insults the most casual viewer.”

But at least the YouTube debate could be called a news event.

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The decision/stunt at KYTX in Tyler, Texas – where they decided to participate in a Fox reality TV show and have performer/athlete/diva Lauren Jones join the news team – has prompted angst as well as resignation.

And that’s just at Public Eye.

I’m here to tell you today that the Lauren Jones experiment is over. But it was only a 30-day experiment anyway …and, as such, perhaps not exactly a sign of the end times.

And while I may be the resident curmudgeon here, I’m still open-minded. So I decided to reach out to the station’s President and General Manager, Philip Hurley to talk him up about the whole thing.

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KYTX-TV Anchorwoman Lauren Jones:

If you want to see a swimsuit model featured on an upcoming reality show covering a celebrity largely famous for a sex tape on a news program on which Stormy The Dog covers the weather, have I got the newscast for you.

Last month, my colleague Matthew Felling wrote disapprovingly about the stunt getting underway in Tyler, Texas, where former World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler and bikini model Lauren Jones is now anchoring the newscast. As Lost Remote notes, Al Tompkins, broadcast group leader for the Poynter Institute, had this to say: “It devalues the work of real journalists who are trying to do real work. It doesn’t do anything to help the reputation of journalists there and around the world.”

True! But! I have a hard time getting as worked up about this as these fine folks.

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