Play One on TV

This is an article about Andrea Koppel, a congressional correspondent for CNN (and former State Department correspondent and Beijing Bureau Chief.) But we’ll get to her in just a minute.

In recent years, a new word has entered into the vernacular of the Average American male. That word is newsbabe.

I still remember the day that the newsbabe phenomenon first hit my hometown of Oklahoma City. It was back in the late 70’s. The national news front was ruled by the likes of Harry Reasoner and Walter Cronkite, people who would be called “newbabes” only in the worst imaginable deserted-island scenario.

My parents obtained most of their television news from the local ABC affiliate, KOCO-TV, which sported the official-sounding moniker of Channel 5 Eyewitness News. The news desk consisted of a trio of men representing the holy triumvirate of news, weather, and sports. These gentlemen embodied the most desirable qualities of the 70’s talking head — serious expression; conservative suit, and a professional vocal timbre. Their job was to put you at ease, making you feel like the news was being delivered at the safe, conservative hands of your uncle (the one who works as a stockbroker downtown and loans money to everyone else in the family).

Around 1978, someone at Channel 5 decided that “Eyewitness News” wasn’t making the grade. People wanted more spice and verve in their news delivery. Being on the cusp of puberty at the time, I didn’t realize that they were really talking about sex appeal. In other words, the station needed to get down, funky, and a little more bodacious.

Exit Eyewitness News. Enter 5 Alive. I’m not sure what possessed them to take a name like “5 Alive”. To me, it sounded like a new fruit juice concoction, or maybe the title of some airplane disaster movie. (Given the right combination of filmmaking and sponsorship, perhaps both).

Along with this hot-blooded and juicy new name came a new breed of hot-blooded and juicy newscaster, transplanted off the modeling runway and into the Oklahoma living room. 5 Alive took the former newscaster position and farmed it out to two new people, one male and one female. The station also took the age of the former newscaster and divided it up between the newbies. I only remember the identity of the female — Jayne Jayroe, a former Miss Oklahoma turned Miss America who actually used her scholarship money for something more useful than a sociology degree. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the male anchor; suffice to say that he looked like the generic football quarterback from high school who dated the head cheerleader and was voted “Most Likely to Blind People with His Teeth.”

I still remember the night that the “beautiful people” made their debut on 5 Alive. The channel had been hyping this first appearance for the better part of the preceding month — it was “5 Alive” this and “5 Alive” that. There was speculation on who these new youngbloods were; what was their hair color; what sign they were born under; how they liked their steaks; etc. The day finally came, the clock clicked to 10:00 pm, and there they were: Jayne and the Blonde fellow, serving up the news with perky little grins and trite little quips.

Oh, it was the same old news — people lived, people died, disasters happened, area moms got profiled for their rhubarb pie recipe — yet it was delivered with a thrilling undercurrent that Eyewitness News could never have done without illegal amounts of aphrodisiacs. Even at the tender age of 12, I knew that the “tension at ten” had been nudged ever-so-slightly upward. A new component had entered the arena of newscasting. Journalistic skill, encyclopedic knowledge, professional integrity, and incredible diction were no longer the only necessary traits of a successful television news anchor. Now, the potential talking head also had to, at the very least, look like he or she just walked off the magazine rack at the grocery store (you know, with all those magazines my son always asks me about, like, “Dad, what’s an orgasm?”)

Ever since that time, the sexual component of the nightly news has been… er, on the rise. Don’t get me wrong - back in the 70’s and even the 80’s, I wasn’t complaining much. It made my teenage and young adult years that much more enjoyable, watching the likes of Deborah Norville breathing deeply over the plight of refugees in Ethiopia.

However, as I got older, I discovered something about myself. The newsbabes, cute though they were, just weren’t getting my attention the way they used to. And it wasn’t just these divas of the journalism set — I was finding out that my standards of beauty were becoming less attached to the physical. Plainly put, I was failing to see how a lot of these women rated the “all that and a bag of chips” label.

I guess the first sign of my newscaster worship dysfunction came during my college years when, much to my dismay, I developed a thing for Lynne Russell. Yes, out of the wide gamut of female personalities that have traipsed in and out of the doors of Ted Turner’s news empire, my heart chose to flip-flop at the feet of the statuesque and bespectacled Ms. Russell. Even then, I understood that she was no classic beauty, yet there was something about her that spoke to my inner news junkie. She had poise, grace, class, and charm. At least, so her Economic Summary reports seemed to indicate.

This choice of Lynne Russell over Deborah Norville tells a lot about me. Given a choice between the sexually-charged pressure of a Jennifer Eccleston or a Paula Zahn versus the graceful demureness of a Lynne Russell (or even a Judy Fortin) I’ll choose grace over pressure every time.

It’s part of my overall makeup that I am attracted to women with graceful, not forceful, femininity. Ask my male friends and I to write down the names of beautiful actresses — they’ll be writing down Sandra Bullock, Jenifer Anniston, and Julia Roberts. I’ll be writing down Cate Blanchett and Emma Thompson (which I suppose may only prove that I have a thing for British women with overbites).

Heck, anyone who has met my beautiful wife will understand why I find culture, intelligence, and college-level vocabulary to be such a turn-on. Oh, and also short hair.

I realize I’m probably being horribly unfair to the hundreds of thousands of women involved in broadcast journalism. I’m sure that most of them are consummate professionals who work long and hard to achieve their positions in life. Which brings us back to Andrea Koppel.

In case you can’t guess from the surname, she is the daughter of that unforgettable standard of the nighttime news desk, Ted Koppel. However, don’t think her famous dad is getting her any special treatment — she’s a competent journalist in her own right, and she speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, something that is normally impossible for any American not actually in the employ of the Chinese espionage services.

I ran across Ms Koppel a couple of years ago while channel surfing. I had stopped on a story about the reaction of the Chinese government to some capitalist thing or another (a twice-weekly event in China). The report was being delivered by a striking redhead with excellent diction, exacting detail, and an impressive vocabulary that included the word “conundrum.”

When her name flashed across the bottom of the screen, part of me was horrified to discover that I was checking out Ted Koppel’s daughter, and that you could definitely see the family resemblance. I’m not saying Ted is hideously ugly or anything, but he’s definitely not my first on my list of “People Who Rock Me Like a Hurricane.” Yet there she was, in all of her dignified glory, looking like Cate Blanchett. With ears.

Fortunately, with me being a married guy and all, none of these issues really matter all that much to me, including the bit about Jennifer Eccleston. Whether or not my nightly news is delivered by Andrea Koppel or Andre the Giant doesn’t approach the importance of, say, making sure my lawn is mowed. So why devote an entire article to Andrea Koppel and the other ghosts of newsbabes past?

Because I hate it when someone (like the media) tries to appeal to my baser instincts. The media companies had better put a stop to this petty attempt at buying my viewership with a pretty face, or else I’ll take my remote and go back to watching Stargate SG-1. If you want to tell me the news using the female vocal register, give me competence, intelligence, and accuracy, and leave the sex appeal at home.

However, if you absolutely, positively must do the sex appeal thing, please put on more of Andrea Koppel. Or even Judy Fortin. Thanks for listening.