Gold Diggers, Jezebels and Baby Mamas!

Fusion Plans Current Events, Not "Traditional News"

The new Fusion network, the joint English-language venture of Univision and ABC News that plans to target young Hispanics, will not be offering "traditional news. We are going to be covering current events, but we are going to be doing it through the filters" of the millennial generation, Isaac Lee, president of Univision News and recently named CEO of Fusion, said on Monday.

Lee told Jon Lafayette of Broadcasting & Cable, "My target audience is a millennial audience that today has a different set of values than what people think of. That lives in the digital world, but definitely enjoys television and enjoys good content and over-indexes in information.

"They are getting their breaking news via Twitter, they're getting their opinions about everything that goes on in their Facebook pages. They are watching several YouTube channels and they are into cable and broadcast and movie theaters and they don't have a network that is targeting only them that has the focus of creating content especially for them. . . ."

Lafayette asked, "How much of what you're going to be doing is going to be traditional news?"

Lee replied, "I think that the key part is not going to be traditional news. We are going to be covering current events, but we are going to be doing it through the filters that I mentioned. Things do not have to be boring to be well done. You can be funny and relevant. You need to be consistent and you need to be outstanding and perceived to be authentic as well.

"So we are going to have a morning show. The morning show has an anchor, a beautiful female anchor [Mariana Atencio] from Venezuela. We have an anchor from Brazil [Pedro Andrade] who does a show out of New York for Globo. It has a guy from Brooklyn [Yannis Pappas] descended from a Greek family who has millions of followers on YouTube. And they are going to be doing a very different morning show that is going to be fun.

"That is going to be entertaining, that is going to be self-deprecating, they're not going to take themselves seriously and they don't pretend. They can actually be having a conversation with an audience that likes to see things plain and simple. They don't need to be reading a Teleprompter. It can all be more casual and more real. . . . "

Utah Has Its First Regular African American Anchorwoman

Nadia Crow, 27, who grew up in Chicago, has become the first regular African American anchorwoman at a Salt Lake City TV station, KTVX-TV,Scott D. Pierce reported Sunday for the Salt Lake Tribune.

"She admits she had a few questions about Utah before she got here," Pierce wrote.

Referring to News Director George Severson, who hired her, Crow said, "I asked George, 'Is there somewhere I can get my hair done? Am I going to be able to go to the grocery store and see somebody that looks like me? What is going to happen if I come there? But coming here has really opened up my eyes. There is diversity here. And there are growing populations that people outside of Utah don't realize are here.'

"Including her friends. A lot of them asked her if she'd be safe in Utah. If she would have to wear 'old-timey clothes' with long sleeves on the air. If she'd end up as someone's third wife.

"'They have these "Big Love" ideas, because that's what they see on TV,' Crow said. 'There are so many misconceptions outside of Utah of what the LDS [Mormon] faith is. And then when you come here, you realize that those things really aren’t true.' . . ."