Naked News
The female anchors read the news fully nude or strip as they present their news segments. 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 whois. 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 10 female anchors, plus guest anchors. The website was popularized entirely by word of mouth, and quickly became an internet meme.
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. 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 10:00pm Mondays-Thursdays.
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 an other expansion of which Naked News Italia, which first debuted in March was its centerpiece.
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. Since the show's inception in 2000, there has been much turnover among the newscasters, and many guest anchors.
"Athena the Greek".
Yukiko Kimura (2005–2007)
Samantha Page (2003–2005)
Alex Pantos (2006–2007)
Brooke Roberts (2001–2002)
Carmen Russo (2000–2002, 2004) – At age 42, she was the oldest cast member. She is unrelated to the Italian model Carmen Russo.
Whitney Saint-John (2006–2007)
Erin Sherwood (2000–2003)
Cameron Shore (2005–2006)
Holly Weston (1999–2001, 2002–2004) – She continued on the show throughout her pregnancy.
Sarah Winters (2002–2003)
Allyson Jones
Naked News at Toronto Pride Parade 2007
Past male anchors are:
Enza Anderson
Pedro Cavallo
Jeremy Chase (since 2004)
Dale Danforth
Billy Prescott
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.
Matt Waterman
Joshua Holt (2001–2004) – Recently announced he was gay in the pages of The Advocate magazine.
Jack Lange (2004)
Malcolm Matisse
Cole McQuade (2004)
Warren Michaels (2001)
Robert Milan (2001–2002)
Raoul Santos (2001–2004)
Johnny Saputo
Derek Shaw
Brock Stern (2003–2004)
Brendan Tanner (2002–2004)
Current writers are:
Greg Preece
Sean K.
In 2006 they copied the NN format in its entirety in a striptease newscast called Les Nuz, except the anchors keep their bottom underwears 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.
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.