Hey Phil, since you must have a bit more experience about the US TV media and particulary about news broadcasts, can you tell us how fierce the competition of anchormen and women is between TV stations? They all seem to be perfect as Barbie and Ken dolls, with beautiful white smiles, good cheeck bones and shiny hair-dos. Are there any channels which are more about the news and less about the pretty people on screen? It seems that some channels base their news on the person and not the news, because from what I’ve gathered, the news are somewhat trivial, for example one day FOX showed a highway chase all day.

Hmmm…all the networks seem to have equally beautiful Barbie and Ken dolls – maybe the national news broadcasters are better looking than the local ones in general. But I don’t see any difference between the U.S. and Finland in that regard. YLE has some of the nicest looking people of them all. Very few of them seem to be over 40 and certainly none of them are anything close to ugly or fat. What do you think?

Some years ago there was a big debate about Monica Welling who worked as a Swedish-language news broadcaster for YLE/FST for a long time. She’s over 50 and they told her to go because her face is ‘worn’ (in the sense that viewers get tired of looking at the same broadcasters for a long time). There was a storm of protest in her favour and I think they actually kept her reading the news for a time. She’s a domestic news journalist now (picture at the bottom of link):

http://internytt.yle.fi/tvnytt/inrikesreportrar.php

I think some news broadcasters can stay in Finland until they retire. Replacing Arvi Lind before his time would have been unthinkable. If you’re big enough in America, it’s the same. Take anchorman Dan Rather for example.

Actually the YLE Tv-nytt website doesn’t say what Monica Welling exactly does for them. I think she has mainly a different function as a reporter than as an anchorwoman. She could very well still be reading the news, at least from time to time. The scandal about her having to go (and YLE/FST keeping her) probably increased the popularity of Tv-nytt and helped Monica Welling to achieve iconic status as a Finland-Swedish anchorwoman. I don’t really watch YLE news broadcasts that often anymore, I wouldn’t even know who’s the big name after Arvi Lind now.

Eva Polttila is still reading the news and she’s well over 50. I absolutely love her. Leena Kaskeala was the leading anchorwoman on MTV3 right up to her retirement. I would hardly call either one of them Barbie dolls.

There is a constant, fierce ratings war between all the major channels in the US: the difference of a few percentage points can translate into hundreds of millions in revenue (advertisers don’t pay set rates: they pay according to how high the ratings are at the exact moment their advertising airs). What has happened is that, over time, viewer habits have been pretty much predicted, with everyone agreeing when is the best time to air a news program, and what kind of format works best. The variables turn out to be not that great, which eventually leads to a certain blandness.

Trying something different can be very risky: losing an audience can translate into millions in losses. Yet when an alternative is presented, the rewards can be great.

Fox’s success is based on offering an alternative. In fact, all of its programming has pushed the edges of audience acceptability. When it first aired on Fox, The Simpsons was considered to be extremely risky; in fact, they only produced shows to last one season. Of course, it turned out to be a huge bonanza. I remember how people actually wrote in, begging for the animators to work faster to get enough shows for another season….

People often forget that FOX used to be a joke network. They’d always have all the b-rate sitcoms, The Simpsons was one of the ones (and crap like Beverly Hills) that made them compete with ABC/NBC/CBS – and that’s how they did it, by putting “risky” shows in their program.

Hey, no making fun of BH 90210. For pure nostalgic reasons.
Wasn’t The X-files also a Fox show, which was considered to be very risky? All of the other networks ended up copying it, obviously. I think The Simpsons made regular fun of the Fox network at one point.

Hey, no making fun of BH 90210.

Can I make fun of Melrose Place?

Fox? Isn’t that the “fair and balanced” choice? *Chuckle* I once saw a documentary about the Fox channel and it showed quite clearly that Fox is nothing but a propaganda tool for the conservative religious-right of USA. Am I right?

Can I make fun of Melrose Place?

Knock yourself out, my friend.

I have to go visit the United States, if only to catch a glimpse of the infamous Fox network.

Yeah that documentary was shown by Nelonen. Of course it was just garbage and propaganda itself… according to FOX News!

By the way, you can get FOX News from ViaSat. http://www.viasat.fi
Maybe some cable operators too.

I think it’s the only original American channel you can get in Finland, at least a news channel. I believe it’s because of its great humour value in Europe

??boriginal: nope, you’re wrong. Fox is merely a corporation interested in making money. If there was money to be made in left-wing broadcasting, Fox would be doing it. But the fact is America is filled with that kind of media already.

It’s too bad Europeans don’t have much exposure to CBS, NBC and ABC news broadcasts. They’re basically just like the BBC, except with American accents.