'And here's the news': analysing the evolution of the marketed newsreader

The newsreader has been a constant fixture of television since its inception but for the most part they have remained elusive objects of study, slipping between journalism studies and celebrity studies. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature by providing a brief historical overview of television newsreading in Australia, together with an analysis of the relationship between newsreaders, gender, celebrity and ratings. In this way we want to put forward a new model for thinking about the relationship between the newsreader and celebrity, as not being antithetical concepts, but rather complementary parts of the marketed newsreader's function: a figure who is as heavily implicated in the marketing and promotion of news as they are in its dissemination. © 2010 SAGE Publications.