No Baseball, Just Babes

While attempting to listen to a recent Reds game, I ventured to 700wlw.com, assuming the team's flagship station could provide me with the always entertaining late inning adventures of the Cincinnati Reds. The first thing I learned was that WLW doesn’t stream Reds or Bengals games due to league broadcasting restraints. I decided to sneak a peak at one of the uber-enlightened local radio hosts before I left the page, and I was stunned to find a photo of a half-naked woman staring directly at me.

The WLW (700AM) home page is a cluttered mess of square boxes, flashing advertisements and tiny links to local news. The dominating advertisement is a continuously flashing box promoting a “Keep Your Kids Safe” story about recalled toys, the evening’s Reds game and a poorly designed page dedicated to the Taste of Blue Ash — which also features a photo of Bill Cunningham wearing a hilariously hideous American Flag dress shirt.

Underneath the seizure-inducing promotion — and right next to the links “More News” and “On Demand Now” — is a link to WLW’s “Babe” page. The promotion fades between photos of women wearing bikini tops, nightgowns and a woman seductively untying the front of a small dress shirt.

It seems as though our city’s largest radio station has stumbled upon an easier way to make money than ridiculing our Latin American brothers and sisters. The WLW Babe Page (“Updated daily!”) includes advertisements for the likes of Office Depot, Sibcy Cline and the Kentucky Speedway.

Along with links titled, “Wet on the Net (‘Daily video dose of sexy women getting wet and playful at the pool’),” “Babe of the Day,” “Babe Gallery 1” and “Babe Gallery 2,” the page provides a section called “Music Video Babes” — 17 streaming music videos by such pop culture icons as Christina Aguilera, Paris Hilton, Beyonce and Jessica Simpson.

The funniest part is that videos by men like Enrique Iglesias, Diddy and Aerosmith have made up for their male-ness by objectifying enough women in their music videos to be featured on such a classy Web site.

Sometimes “Babes” is demoted from the glorious center-page promotion and found as a link under the “News Now” section, which today features links to the following coverage: “Big oops for teen pageant contender!” “Child welfare called in to check out Britney’s kids” and “Is Madonna a fit mother?”

Be warned before you go to 700wlw.com to witness this spectacle — or whatever else you might decide to do once you’re there: Visiting the WLW’s Babe page will probably be considered a breach of personal conduct policy if you visit it using any respectable company’s computer. Seriously.

— Danny Cross
(Photo: 700wlw.com)
(Danny swears he was just trying to listen to a baseball game, but ended up seeing this in "Babe Gallery 2." CityBeat has not yet determined his punishment.)

Comments

[cincyrealitycheck]

Enrique Iglesias? Has anyone told them he's not a whitie??

Well, he's got a dick and that's all that REALLY matters....

[WestEnder]

The fact that the doofuses at WLW get "the big one" from looking at this white trash skank says a lot about them.

The East German female olympic shot-put team was more attractive. And they'd have a better radio station, too.

[Roger Pedacter]

You should be writing the (or some kind of non-)sports column.

[David Gallaher]

That's a transvestite flaunting his camel toe.
Did Mallory or Pepper or Ghiz supply this image?

[Mark In Newport]

It looks surprisingly similar to a few of your CityBeat ads. When did you guys turn prudish? If CityBeat does it to increase ad revenue, it's OK, but if WLW does it, then it's wrong because_________ (fill in the blank). Answer: Because we are liberal and virtuous. WLW spews conservative views, so they are evil. Better not look to long into that "deep, dark, truthful mirror," you may see some of that "hypocrisy" that you so ardently accuse others of...

[jane when i order coffee]

is there some good reason why the comments on here are dissing this woman? talking trash on the model is missing the point of wlw's problem (and gross of you. blame the woman for taking sexy pictures! if she wouldn't pose, there wouldn't be objectification! what a skank she must be!... you can't be serious.) quit with the namecalling.

[John Fox]

Mark, nice try with deflecting attention back to CityBeat, but the comparison doesn't work. CityBeat's adult phone line ads are advertisements that are selling a product/service, and they're grouped in an advertising section near the back of the paper and clearly packaged as advertising. WLW's babe photos are displayed with what, for comparison sake, we'll call the site's editorial content and don't appear to be selling a product or service. A better comparison to CityBeat would be if the paper had a photo spread of scantily-clad women on page 6 that appeared between the Letters to the Editor and the News section and was presented as editorial content. As you know, we don't do that.

[Mark In Newport]

All good points. Good to see you're actually reading these comments, Mr Fox. Did you enjoy the Declan MacManus quote? We shall meet again, Mr Fox. Also: Why so critical of Paul Daugherty? I saw what you wrote in the CB Annual Manual. He's actually upset with you guys...