Naked News, billing itself as "the program with nothing to hide", is a subscription website featuring a real television newscast. The show is prepared in Toronto and runs daily, with six 25-minute episodes per week. The female anchors read the news fully nude or strip as they present their news segments. Naked News TV is its offshoot pay-per-view or subscription service. Regardless of the gender of the anchor, most viewers are men. The male version ceased production on 31 October 2007.

Naked News also aired briefly as a late night television series on Citytv Toronto.

History

Naked News was conceived by Fernando Pereira and Kirby Stasyna and debuted in June 2000 as a web-based news service featuring an all-female cast. It began with only one anchor, Victoria Sinclair, who is still with the program which has currently grown to eight female anchors, plus guest anchors. The website was popularized entirely by word of mouth, and quickly became a popular web destination. During the height of its popularity, the website was receiving over 6 million hits per month. Part of the large amounts of web traffic in the site's early days was because the entire newscast could be viewed for free and supported by advertising. By 2002, after the crash of Internet advertising, only one news segment could be viewed freely, and by 2004, no free content remained on the website. Beginning in 2005, a nudity-free version of Naked News was available to non-subscribers. Beginning in June 2008, two news segments could be viewed freely. The UK channel Sumo TV briefly showed episodes of Naked News, while Playboy One, a free-to-view channel in the UK, currently broadcasts the show at 9:30pm Mondays-Fridays.

In 2001, Bulgarian director Stilian Ivanov began working in MSAT and produced the Naked news which were commented in the media around the world and received positive international reports /except from some Turkish newspapers/. The show has been stopped by National Council for Radio and Television. Shortly after which this control authority was dissolved.

A male version of the show was created in 2001 to parallel the female version, but has ceased production as it did not enjoy the female version's popularity and fame. Although it was originally targeted towards female viewers (at one point said to be 30% of the website's audience), the male show later promoted itself as news from a gay perspective.

In January 2006, Naked News Japan was launched as a joint venture between Naked News owner eGalaxy and Sunrise Corp, a seller of goods and services over the Internet. Due to Japanese broadcasting laws, the presenters currently only strip to their underwear, although the producers have indicated they hope to go further in the future.

In January 2008 eGalaxy announced another expansion, of which the centerpiece was Naked News Italia (which debuted in March).

Cast

Most of the show's announcers have been recruited through classified ads in alternative newspapers in Toronto. As such, most of the show's crew comes from the Toronto area. The show features occasional on-the-street interviews by topless newscasters, which are made possible by Ontario's Topfree equality laws. Since the show's inception in 2000, there has been much turnover among the newscasters, and many guest anchors. The female announcers have been featured in almost every medium including television (CBS Sunday Morning, The Today Show, The View, Sally Jessy Raphaël, and numerous appearances on Entertainment Tonight and ET Insider) newspapers and magazines, (TV Guide, Playboy) and as guests on multiple radio shows including Howard Stern.

The female anchors as of September 2009 are:

1. Katherine Curtis (2008-present)
2. Christine Kerr (2005-present)
3. Whitney St. John (2006–2007, 2009-present)
4. Victoria Sinclair (1999–2001, 2002-present) – The first NN reporter, she originally performed solo before additional news anchors were added.
5. Valentina Taylor (2007-present)
6. April Torres (2003-present)
7. Roxanne West (2001-present)

Past female anchors are:

1. Ariella Banks (2009)
2. Lisa Benton (2006)
3. Devon Calwell (2000–2001) – At age 19, she was the youngest cast member.
4. Lynn Colson (2002-2004)
5. Diane Foster (2000–2001) She is unrelated to the Canadian track and field athlete.
6. Gretchen Frazier (2001–2002)
7. Gia Gomez (2003, 2005–2006)
8. Kelli Graham (2002–2003)
9. Kaye Grant (2001–2002)
10. Elizabeth Jansen (2001-2005)
11. Ashley Jenning (2003–2005)
12. Alyson Jones (2001-2004)
13. Athena King (2001–2003, 2005) – a.k.a. "Athena the Greek".
14. Yukiko Kimura (2005–2007)
15. Elle Kingsley (2008-2009)
16. Lily Kwan (2001-??) -- "Naked in the Streets" and "Lily in the UK" segments re-air periodically.
17. Samantha Page (2003–2005)
18. Michelle Pantoliano (2002-2006) – Former TV broadcaster from New York City. Her previously aired "Locker Talk" segments appear every Sunday on Naked News Magazine
19. Alex Pantos (2006–2007)
20. Sandrine Renard (2001-2008)
21. Brooke Roberts (2001–2002)
22. Carmen Russo (2000–2002, 2004) – At age 42, she was the oldest cast member. She is unrelated to the Italian model Carmen Russo.
23. Erin Sherwood (2000–2003)
24. Cameron Shore (2005–2006)
25. Erica Stevens (2002–2006, 2007-2008)
26. Holly Weston (1999–2001, 2002–2004) – She continued on the show throughout her pregnancy.
27. Sarah Winters (2002–2003)

Past male anchors are:

1. Enza Anderson
2. Pedro Cavallo
3. Jeremy Chase (since 2004)
4. Dale Danforth
5. Billy Prescott
6. Lucas Tyler (since 2001) – The first male anchor of the show, now also producer and director, said to bear a strong resemblance to NBC newsman Matt Lauer.
7. Matt Waterman
8. Joshua Holt (2001–2004) – Recently announced he was gay in the pages of The Advocate magazine.
9. Jack Lange (2004)
10. Malcolm Matisse
11. Cole McQuade (2004)
12. Warren Michaels (2001)
13. Robert Milan (2001–2002)
14. Raoul Santos (2001–2004)
15. Johnny Saputo
16. Derek Shaw
17. Brock Stern (2003–2004)
18. Brendan Tanner (2002–2004)

Current writers are:

1. Bradley Yandon
2. Sheena Goodyear
3. Trevor Aune

Similar shows

The initial success of the show's concept spawned several imitators, mostly on the internet, but also including The Daily Flash, a news program on Playboy Channel.

Among the imitators on the internet:

• Comédie! – In 2001, this French cable TV network ran a series promos featuring males and females casually undressing as they read jokes. In 2006 they copied the NN format in its entirety in a striptease newscast called Les Nuz, except the anchors keep their bottom underwear on.
• Radio Tango – Oslo, Norway radio station once featured stripping female weather readers on their website.

A comedic "precursor" to this concept occurred in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, in which Terry Jones began performing a striptease while giving a fast-paced rundown of economic news.

A very similar phenomenon by the name "Noodie News" appears in Canadian Margaret Atwood's 2003 novel Oryx and Crake.

A late-night public channel news show, Голая Правда (The Bare Truth), was widely broadcast in Russia some time in the early 2000's.

Počasíčko (diminutive of "weather") was Czech TV Nova's past-10PM featurette launched in January 1998 where a nude woman (or occasionally, a man) got dressed in clothing appropriate for the next day's weather forecast. This was discontinued after several years and returned as web-only in February 2007. When Nova launched a new online portal in May 2008, it included a "Red News" section causing controversy; asked about the Naked News, they denied securing license and stressed Počasíčko's primacy.

Parodies

A 2005 episode of the satirical New Zealand news show Eating Media Lunch depicted newsreaders fornicating in a parody of Naked News called "Fuck News".

See also

• Barely Cooking

References

External links

• http://www.nakednews.com
• Naked News Daily Male
• Naked News Japan
• Naked News Italia