Saturday, November 24, 2007
Naked News‘ slogan reads “The Program With Nothing to Hide,” and everything holds true to that. The Canadian-based program presents the news completely bare, with little exception, including a segment they present outside naked. The exception being if they are in the process of disrobing, or if they are reporting a tragic news event. Gabriel Pollard, writing for Wikinews, interviewed Victoria Sinclair about the “sensual, but not sexual” Naked News, and her presenting role.
The show had a fairly basic start, with two friends, Fernando Perreira and Kirby Stasnyk, bluntly thinking that the news would be better presented naked. Sinclair said, “In this case, these men had the means and the will to turn their idea into reality.” A Russian program with a similar concept, “600 seconds” on M1 TV, in which news anchor Svetlana Pesotskaya removed an article of clothing after each story, received high ratings within eight months of its introduction in 1999. Naked Broadcasting Network Inc. also started a male edition in 2001, but this was discontinued a few years later due to lack of interest from its key demographic, the gay community. It failed to get the same kind of grounding experienced by the female edition. Later imitators in Hong Kong and Japan have also proved successful.
In 1999—its inception—Naked News only had around 8,000 subscribers of a free five-minute show hosted on Daily Dirt. They now boast six million paid subscribers to a much longer news program of 22-minutes produced every six days from 172 countries worldwide. Lead Anchor and spokeswoman Victoria Sinclair puts the success of the international viewership due to the “captivating, saucy, and certainly different” way of presenting the news, “That certainly counts when the news is bad—which it often is.” The public loves the format, and have become “quite attached” to the anchors, says 38-year-old Sinclair.
“I believe the secret to our success is that we challenged the accepted boundaries while keeping it clean and tasteful.
“I think the way has been paved for us by mainstream journalism; we would never have been embraced so eagerly by the world if it weren’t well prepared.”
Sinclair says the reason she got attracted to the Naked News program in the first place was because of its originality, and it felt “very adventurous and underground.” “I think we have a friendlier way of delivering the news….”
As well as the show being streamed onto the Internet, another version of the show called Naked News TV! is also available on pay-per-view in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. Naked News TV! is a weekly 50-minute show and marks Naked News’ success at porting over from the Internet to television.
While Sinclair has been presenting Naked News since the pilot programme in May 1999 – production started in December 1999 – she can’t see herself doing anything else, unless it is equally as “unusual”, involves technology, and the Internet. However, she did take a year sabbatical after 9/11. She left her previous job of marketing because it was no longer fulfilling. Sinclair plans to continue her anchoring role in Naked News, and holding a position of Public Relations, as the show expands into the new markets of South Korea and Italy until the time comes that she looks better non-nude.
Her “loving and supportive” family and friends are entirely supportive of her current profession. “They are all accustomed to me as it is through their influence that I have become such an independent freethinker.”