Let me open with the disclaimers.  I don’t know anything about fashion.  My personal style could be described as anonymous.  I generally wear things that won’t draw attention one way or another.  It’s easy to do, since no one is looking at me any way.  I have a new wife who won’t let me make a big mistake, even though I usually don’t need to call in my safety net very often.

Having said all of that, what the hell is going on in the attire department of the local TV news sets?  I noticed something Saturday morning that is just wrong and like I often do, started thinking about it more than I should.  Take a look at this dress from WXIN Fox 59.

Now why would anyone in the news world think the evening gown was the way to go on Saturday morning?  Ok, there are a few occasions where the evening gown works on local news, like a Presidential visit, a twenty fifth anniversary of the founding of the station, Oscars night (when it’s held in Indy), etc.  but not on the average Saturday morning.

Next, there are travesties of taste within appropriate clothing groups.  Take this famous sweater that has been horribly displayed at least three times on WTHR NBC 13:

There is no occasion for this sweater.

Here’s another evening gown from last night on 13.  While apparently a hot dress, it has no business at the news desk:

And before any of my women friends start calling me sexist, the man wardrobe has a huge problem as well.  It’s just that it is easier to address (as expected).

The jacket and tie thing is over for the most part.  I can’t believe we are still clinging to it.  I also can’t believe that with this historically uncreative and safe set of rules, there are news desk types that can still do things like this:

How does this get by ESPN?  And in Chris Berman’s case, it happens every football Sunday.  How?

I suggest that that all of these talking heads start dressing the way their audience either currently dresses, or currently wants to dress.  Again, the first station that does it, will have an edge locally, since so little differentiates each station on content.

Who should people look to for advice on this topic?  It’s absolutely not me, even though I freely give it here. I’m from the “I don’t know how to describe art, but I know it when I see it” group of morons.  I can, however, see who the best dressed morning news personality is and name her Fashion Police Commissioner. Her name is Larra Overton, Traffic a Reporter for Fox 59.  I don’t have good pictures, because I watch the morning news with my wife and that might be awkward.

I would like like to appoint a male counterpart, but they all suck at this and in exactly the same way.

Let’s rethink how we are doing this Indianapolis.  Now we have five (?!) local news stations and they all seem to be copying one another in a race to a championship in monotony and predictability.

Who wants that trophy?