Flashing Flesh on Fox News

Laura Ingraham was on O’Reilly Factor last night, griping about how much the network tends to show scantily-clad women in its newscasts. However, Bill didn’t seem to take it seriously at all, whereas Laura was pretty riled up over it.

You know what? I agree with her.

Before I go any further, I shall make it clear that I’m a young, straight guy with an acute appreciation for the female form. But is Fox News trying to make people like me straighter or something?

It seems like every time you turn the station on, you get an eyeful of short-skirted babes in a coffee shop, Tara Conner prancing in a bikini, Pamela Anderson’s silicon peaks, etc. This is stuff that belongs on such stations as Entertainment TV, Spike TV, G4TV, among others, but not on a news station. My mother just can’t stand it, and she made a good point when she pointed out how conservative people watch this station and area businesses keep their lobby televisions turned to FNC, yet here they are showing decidedly non-conservative video. How are you appealing to your conservative base with unconservative material?

I’m thinking the problem stems from the format of most of the programming presented on FNC: televised radio talk shows. I realize they’re not the same programming, but they’re a television version of the same format, and that format is personality-driven, editorialized, vehicles of opinion and commentary on news. Now, I have no problem with that sort of thing, as they have to do something to differentiate themselves in the market and present something more interesting that gets people’s attention and caters to its viewership. It’s why I and millions of other people listen to talk radio, after all. But showing hotties strutting their stuff on a news channel defies its own principles.

However, the more I listen, the more irritated I become. Almost every one of them seem to move from one outrage to the next…news is news. Granted, I understand that big news doesn’t happen every day and await fresh commentary from radio people, and, being a radio host myself, I understand how it is sometimes when you have something to say that maybe not everybody cares to hear. But finding silly stuff like Rosie O’Donnell’s most recent verbal diarrhea or some Hollywood actor’s insane opinions and dwelling on it really turns me off. But this particular outrage just happens to be one I see as far overdue.