The great Anglo-French dumbing down contest
October 29th, 2008 by 
bleungberg
Two glamorous forty-something women, both at the height of their careers as anchors of their respective country’s highest-rated national news bulletins, and yet, two contrasting outcomes with a suprise victor.
The ladies in question are the BBC’s Fiona Bruce (above) and TF1’s Laurence Ferrari - both of whom fully encapsulate beauty, elegance and coolness and have a combined audience of 25 million viewers between them in the UK and France.
Sadly for Ms Ferrari, it’s her English rival - the less-glamorous of the pair - who can’t seem to put a foot wrong at the moment.
Both women had been catapulted into fronting a couple of venerable television institutions to halt falling ratings: Bruce on ‘The Antiques Roadshow’ and Ferrari presenting TFI’s 20.00 Journal.
What seemed like big shoes to fill in the form of Michael Aspel turned out to be a bit of a doodle for Ms Bruce, who has added almost 4 millions viewers to the antiques programme in the space of two months, despite accusations of dumbing down.
By contrast, Ferrari’s 20.00 bulletin hasn’t halted the slide in ratings which began under Patrick Poivre d’Avour’s tenure and is shedding bucketloads of viewers to France 2’s rival bulletin. Apparently, French viewers are a conservative bunch and haven’t taken well to their glamorous new host as opposed to the wrinkly PPDA.
In order to counter this slide, her bosses have taken the unprecedented move in ordering the ultra-attractive Ferrari to look more frumpy and to cover her tits up, including changing her hairstyle and clothing to reflect the sombre tone of the newscast.
Probably the last thing she’d expect to hear when she signed the contract to succeed PPDA - ‘we want you to look like Ugly Betty’!
By hiring her back in the spring, TFI executives had already made the decision to choose beauty over gravitas. By ordering Ms Ferrari (below) to look ‘more professional’ is a self-admission that they’d got their priorities all wrong.
Looks like it’s one-nil to the Beeb in the great Anglo-French dumbing down contest!
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