PLAYGIRL Announces Winners of Sexiest Newscaster Election

NEW YORK, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The results are in and it's time to set the record straight. Of the 50,000 votes cast in the Playgirl's "Sexiest Newscaster" election, where readers were asked to vote online for their favorite national newsman -- the official winner is MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. Several news sources had inaccurately reported that a candidate from a rival cable network had actually won when in fact, he came in second. We still love you, Sean Hannity. (Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20030102/PLAYGIRLLOGO ) Olbermann ran a tough campaign -- linking his website to PLAYGIRL's and urging his viewers to get out the vote. He won with 24%, sweeping both "red" and "blue" states. Hannity of the Fox News Channel has his adoring fans as well, sliding him firmly into second place. CNN's Anderson Cooper, who was in Baghdad and unable to make those crucial stump speeches, came in a close third. The full election results can be seen in the October issue of PLAYGIRL.

"Voter turn-out was phenomenal," said Michele Zipp, PLAYGIRL's Editor-in-Chief. "Our readers jammed our email server extolling the virtues of all those sexy news guys on TV. In the end, it was Keith Olbermann who brought it home. Playgirl will be honored to make a $2,500.00 donation to the charity of his choice."

There were big some surprises among the top ten. Andy Rooney tied for 5th place with a much younger Bill Hemmer of CNN. Today's Matt Lauer earned 6th place, ABC's Peter Jennings scored #7 while NBC's Tom Brokaw tied for 8th place with his colleague and successor Brian Williams. One smitten Williams devotee wrote Zipp a lengthy email explaining how she willingly bought her own satellite dish just to watch his newscasts! Fox News Channel's Washington reporter, Brit Hume placed at #9, while NBC's Lester Holt held slot #10.

AND THEN THERE WERE THE WRITE-IN VOTES...Bill O'Reilly of Fox News Channel, received about 200 write-in votes from his admiring fans followed by CNN 's medical cutie Sanjay Gupta and NBC's Stone Philips of Dateline. Oh, and Wolf Blitzer, your fans tell us you definitely have the sexiest name.

For more news on the poll, tune into the October issue of PLAYGIRL on newsstands today.

"Keith Olbermann...[with]the wit of a Pet Rock?"

LOL, that's actually Keith Olbermann, the scrapper, who linked to the poll and his web site and actually lobbied for votes. You gotta give him an "A" for effort.

Glad Sean finished second, knowing Olbermann lobbied his ego won't be too bruised!

I think that I think that Sanjay Gupta is actually the cutests, but I am surprised Shep Smith didn't get any write-ins.

And for the record, I did not vote in this poll, but I'm glad to see the included the Fox boys in their nominees.

Playgirl, part of the new media?

Thanks. I didn't want to get into it much with some Freepers, since at least one jumped to a conclusion I didn't even suggest. No idea what that's all about.

Of course women can (and do) admire handsome and well built men. However, there clearly isn't a high level of interest in supporting women's magazines that celebrate male nudes from a purient perspective.

This is probably because of a lot of reasons. Only the conclusion is important here - women tend to not buy magazines like Playgirl.

There are numerous men's magazines of nude women that are dedicated to legs, chests, different ethnic flavors, etc.

Women make up a little more than 1/2 the population of the USA. Yet there is no significant industry for women's magazines that feature nude men. Interestingly, there is a significant interest in men's magazines that feature nude men. Go figure...

The sex industry is odd, and very focused on men's desires. There is lots of straight porn directed at males (and to a lesser extent, couples), there is lots of gay porn directed at men, but there is almost no porn directed at women. Prostitution is another aspect of the sex industry that demonstrates this dynamic - there are no shortage of female prostitutes that appeal directly to straight men, and to a much lesser extent, couples. There are male prostitutes, for sure, but they tend to serve the needs of, you guessed it, gay men.

Women, historically, have little need or desire for that kind of stuff - that may be because of many reasons, but only the conclusion is important here. Women don't hit the bar at the Bellagio at 1130pm looking for what male prostitues are available tonight. The 1/2 inch thick 'Entertainers' section of the Las Vegas phonebook similarly targets the male client, and not the female client.

Getting back to Playgirl's readership, there is info on the web that supports what I said, and you found some of it with ease. I just checked out some web pages quickly - for example, Playgirl publically concedes that 'at least' 25% of their readership are (presumably gay) men. Other data (primarily intended for advertisers) supports that 'at least 53%' of the readership is 'male.'

I suspect the number is even greater than that (my guess, based on nothing in particular, is that probably close to 3/4 of the readership are males, and the remaining 25% is a mix of curious female young adults/older teens, amd women of all ages without a sexual outlet who are feeding their more base desires - I also suspect this 25% rotates much more than the other 75%, that is to say that they might pick up an issue here and there for a spell, and then never go to it again).

The basic premise that Playgirl is largely a gay men's magazine is also fairly common knowledge in the publishing industry, which I have had some presence in. Why any Freepers would dispute this relatively obvious and 'not-so-secret' secret is beyond me.

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