On the dial

Where on the dial will you find starlet-filled Jacuzzis and news reporters who strip?

Jerry Springer? The latest Fox reality show?

Nope. Univision and Telemundo, according to Chron Latin TV writer Magaly Morales, who works up a pretty good froth over it:

Though both networks are equally guilty, Univisión -- nicknamed "bimbovision" on Internet message boards -- is perhaps the biggest culprit. It seems nearly every Univisión program except newscasts is packed with an army of bodacious, dressed-for-ratings bimbettes.

El Gordo y la Flaca (The Fat Man and the Skinny Woman), a weekday show at 3 p.m. on Channel 45 that is supposed to dish showbiz gossip, included a Jacuzzi in which TV starlets and models frolic -- in almost nothing -- with the show's 300-pound host. El Gordo's team also produces a prime-time weekly special, Pica y Se Extiende, where the sexual innuendo gets even more out of hand.

[...]

Telemundo seems a little more tame when it comes to unnecessary raunchiness, but it is not guiltless.

The network's noon gossip show Cotorreando, a program with too many hosts already (there are five on the set, speaking all at once), recently introduced a new character they call "sexy professor" who strips down to a bikini as she presents a news segment.

I'm not making this up.

Morales has apparently been taking lessons in Blue Nose from senior TV writer Ann Hodges, who has been known to actually get the vapors while writing about certain topics.

Makes you wonder, though: There's a Spanish language option on most TVs nowadays for the English language channels. When will they come out with an English language option for Univision and Telemundo? I mean, if they're looking to expand their audience...

Posted by Charles Kuffner on December 01, 2002 to TV and movies | TrackBack