‘Marilyn syndrome’ hits epidemic proportions at Nine news
Television’s ranks of blonde women in key news associated on-air presenting and reporting roles have never been so well populated, Annette Sharp writes.
Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner famously once said of his hectic love life: “Picasso had his pink period and his blue period. I am in my blonde period right now.”
The same could be said of Australian TV bosses, particularly those running the new-look Nine.
Even before Nine bosses came up with the startling bookend Dresden doll solution to their Karl Stefanovic breakfast show problem anyone watching the nation through the lens of free-to-air television could be forgiven for thinking someone had thrown a rope around this wide brown land and hauled it north, out of Asia, to northern Europe where women of fair hair and blue eyes run rampant among the red moose, elks and squirrels, though possibly not with microphones clutched in tiny orange Le Tan-stained hands.
As the commercial networks increasingly leave the business of serious news investigation to the newspapers and the nation’s public broadcasters, what is left in the void once occupied by big bold and expensive news programs are recycled news bulletins on high rotation and stuffed with cheap poorly shot CCTV vision.
To pretty these bulletins up, the young blonde newsreader has been zealously cultivated.
At the serially third-placed Ten network, the blonde newsreader was once a point of difference from the more serious Nine, Seven, ABC and SBS, where brunettes once reigned supreme.
Decades on, Ten hasn’t strayed from the formula. A trio of blondes still dominate its news programs.
Sarah Harris anchors Studio Ten in the mornings, Sandra Sully the 5pm news bulletin, and Carrie Bickmore, with three Gold Logies to her name for The Project, has become the glamorous and popular new dominatrix of the evening autocue — all of which makes Ten’s recent appointment of grown-up brunettes Lisa Wilkinson and Chris Bath more than a little intriguing.
Meanwhile Seven has Samantha Armytage, once described by a Seven exec as the “barmaid” breakfast television needed,
hosting Sunrise and her predecessor, Mel Doyle, anchoring Sunday Night, Seven’s flagship current affairs program. Though on paper it reads like the introduction to an old gag, the ABC has managed the most equitable mix of follicles, with a brunette, Virginia Trioli, at breakfast, a blonde, Juanita Phillips, in the 7pm news slot, and a red head, Leigh Sales, stealing her way into a top 10 shows position at 7.30.
Over at Nine, which last week slipped behind Seven in the ratings in the critical weeknight 6pm news slot, the “Marilyn Monroe syndrome” looks to be at near epidemic proportion, with more than 20 stunning blonde women now in key news associated on-air presenting and reporting roles.
That’s rather a lot for a network that once prided itself on being the nation’s go-to destination for serious news and current affairs and was formerly home to the most admired and emulated female reporter/anchor on Australian television, Jana Wendt, a brunette, and her toughened peers Jennifer Byrne and Tracy Grimshaw, Grimshaw having managed to buck the trend and hang on to her post as host of A Current Affair.
As Nine wrestles with its news identity post Fairfax merger — and the value of a slate of brash sex and dating reality shows that these days consistently and seismically out-rate news programs, Nine’s audience, perhaps lulled into believing the reality and news genres have merged, now wakes up weekdays to a trifecta of stunning golden blondes.
For the past month the Nine day has started with Today breakfast supremo Georgie Gardner and her agile offsider Deb Knight — who hand over to fellow golden blonde Sonia Kruger at 9am on Weekend Today.
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At 11.30am it’s time for Nine’s Morning News, last week presented by honey blonde Davina Smith.
The afternoon and evening news bulletins then start to look like a modelling call for a L’Oreal blonde toner chart — with a couple of refashioned “brondes” (Amber Sherlock, Tiffiny Genders, Kelly Fedor etc) thrown in to appeal to all appetites.
At the lightest end of the toner chart spectrum is platinum news sports reader Erin Molan.
Then follows the sunny honey collection, with UK correspondent Amelia Adams, Canberra correspondent Fiona Willan, health reporter Gabriella Rogers, newly blonde returning US correspondent Lizzie Pearl, and reporters Zara James, Alice Monfries, Danielle Post, Hannah Sinclair, Sophie Walsh, Lara Vella and “Jacketgate” fallwoman, Julie Snook.
Over in the 60 Minutes’ cottage can be found a trio of mega-paid megawatt blondes in the form of Liz Hayes, Ali Langdon and Tara Brown.
And then of course there’s the much anticipated return of Today refugee Sylvia Jeffreys — whose relocation to a yet-to-be-announced prime time slot may or may not impact the career of the flaxen Leila McKinnon, once earmarked for great things.
Given television executives are going to unprecedented lengths to capture female viewers over male, one would have thought they would be looking to employ women who better reflect the diversity of real Australia — a nation in which one third of the population was born abroad and a growing percentage from China, India and Arabic nations.
It seems not. It seems what they want, in greater numbers, are a news force of women whose blonde highlights and teeth sparkle prettily — even if they are unable to do anything to stop the audience decline in news programs nationally and may inadvertently be contributing to them.
With enough sunny tanned golden women plugging the holes in a sinking ship, it is reasonable to assume executives hope fewer people standing on the shore will notice the perilous list of the ship — dazzled instead by the glamorous view.
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