Good Day New York: Good Morning Queens

Subversive or not, I am calling Good Day New York the gayest morning show on local television. Everyone on it is basically a queen, regardless of sexual orientation: There is Uber Queen, Jodi Applegate, who rules the roost and let's everyone know it; then there's Junior Queen, Ron Corning, who would be as powerful as Applegate if was there as long as she was; Weather Queen, Mike Woods does his best Al Roker-meets-Shemar Moore imitation ("oh gosh, li'l ol' me? I'm not trying to be a sex symbol); then there's Traffic Queen Stacy-Ann Gooden, who must have a huge legion of fans since I can't see how she gets into the promos when Lucy Noland doesn't; and finally there is News/Single Parent Queen Lucy Noland, who eerily resembles Ann Curry (even down to ethnicity) and often is the only person to mention that they have a life outside of the studio...in her case, it comes down to her being single with a bad dating pool.

Then there are two princesses: Anne Craig, who always seemed awkward doing hard news and then was put on the cute beat ("Anne About Town"), fortunately; and Mark Joyella, who actually was quite good on hard news, but transitioned pretty well to the Dave Price (read: jester) slot, since you know Mike Woods was never ever in a million years allow himself to act foolish oncamera. Interestingly, Joyella is the only man of unknown sexual orientation on this show, however, this show is so fused with a gay sensibility that he winds up coming off sexually ambiguous as a result. (This is a good thing in my book. I think we need more shows with a gay sensibility.)

Good Day New York follows the established format of virtually all morning shows: news, weather, traffic, infotainment, and repeat. What it excels in, however; is in personality--way more than CW11's Morning News or even Today. The anchors are extremely casual. Normally this is the kiss of death in news, but in morning news, this is an asset. As I type this, Applegate & Corning are doing the financial report with a man from Fox Business News and it sounds more like a watercooler conversation than a cut and dry business report.

This is followed by Anne Craig at the inventors' convention that was profiled on Today a few days ago. Being local as opposed to national news, Muhammad has to go to the mountain here (I am relishing using that expression to describe a Fox show), and Craig is at the Javits Center, cavorting along with the president of Wired Media. I don't know how she does it, but I could never get even close to her degree of perkiness at 7:40 in the morning. I couldn't be that upbeat at noon.

Mike Woods does the weather every ten minutes on Good Day New York, and I think I should probably explain why I aim for Mike Woods everytime I refer to this show on this piece of the internet. Quite frankly, I don't buy his schtick. He just comes across as very phony to me and I just want to see him make a misstep and admit that he's human like the rest of us. It's a bit incongruous with the rest of the show, and I wish he'd just get over himself. In addition, it is pretty much apparent that he or his handlers are trying to shape him as another weatherman fame whore, and I hate that trend. (Oddly enough, it never bothered me that Jillian Barberie does the same thing on Good Day LA, but is the weather in LA all that different from day-to-day? I think not.)

I think of the Good Day shows as being the example of how a morning news show should be: personality driven, but not a cult of personality--which is why I don't particularly think the station is being wise in hyping Jodi Applegate every ten seconds. I first got used to watching them when I lived in Burbank for four months and found Good Day LA vastly more interesting than anything else on television. Coincidentally, 2/3s of Good Day LA's anchor team comes from New York and the show could best be described as a shouting match. Conversely, the New York version is much more measured and laid back, I have always wondered why Fox never does an anchor exchange between the two for a week. It seems like a very good idea for a ratings stunt.

(Personally, I've always thought that the Milwaukee Fox affiliate should revamp their show under the Good Day format, since I think Milwaukeeans are much more earthier than Wake Up would suggest.)

Since this is a Fox show on a channel in a city served by the New York Post, it is rather interesting that a pro-Republican bias rarely comes up. I'm certainly not saying that it is never there, however. Earlier this morning, Applegate & Corning talked to Chris Wallace and did all they could to make him appear like a bruised David against Clinton's Goliath as opposed to actually asking him if Clinton's truthful allegation about Wallace doing a "conservative attack" on him was valid. Then again, that is not their place as members of sister networks, nor do have they established themselves as probing journalists. (I don't even think WNYW's tough-as-nails star anchor Rosanna Scotto would have the guts to ask Wallace that question.)

Getting back to the show's gay sensibility, I'm reminded of an incident that happened a few weeks ago when the picture of John Travolta kissing another man on the lips was making the rounds. Applegate commented that it was an interesting revelation, as did Gooden and Noland, who were eager to find out if it was evidence that Travolta is gay. What was interesting for me was the reaction of the show's two resident gay men: Corning could not bring himself to give an opinion whatsoever, meanwhile Woods brushed it off by saying that it "means nothing, [I] see men do that all the time." Men may kiss each other on the cheek all the time, Mike, but on the lips? I think not. The comment didn't boost his butch quotient as he might've hoped, but just made him seem rather, um, idiotic.

And of course, as I'm writing this, "Mamma Mia" is playing and both Applegate & Corning refer to themselves as "huge ABBA fans." This is to introduce a segment on mother/daughter rivalry. To their credit, the producers do not let Applegate fly solo on this segment. In fact, as a longtime viewer, I'd like to tell the producers to never let Applegate go solo, because she has a tendency to overwhelm the interviewee. I generally like Applegate, but she can be overbearing, as evidenced by the period over the Summer post-Chris Gailus. *

* This show really is a different animal with Ron Corning than it was with Gailus. Gailus served as the show's straight man (in more ways than one) and his awkwardness and geekiness became a pun onto itself. Corning, however, gives as good as he gets, and he gets a lot.

Now it is time for "Mark [Joyella]'s Mission." A daily scavenger hunt that they send Joyella on, thus proving himself to be the show's keen jester. It also makes him look a bit like Carson Kressley ("oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!") on the sidelines of the Super Bowl, if you know what I mean. Today's "mission" was to see if Mark could get people in a diner to do the wave. Of course, he does, but some of these "missions" are hard, such as trying to coerce people at Penn Station to do The Hustle in front of a TV camera.

Every Friday, the show becomes self-referential, and shockingly succeeds at it, with a segment entitled "Fox Soup," where they recap the bizarre and comical antics the Queens & Princesses have been tossed into from Monday to Thursday. Joyella recaps these goings on with a very heavy and pleasing degree of laconic sarcasm that you never see on The Daily Show, much less a news show. This week's tidbits: how many food cliches can Mark make versus Ernie Anastos, Corning & Dr. Keith Ablow talk about "teasing polygamy," dogs in a carrier bag ("if you don't want to carry your dog in a bag, we have something called a leash" says Mark), and Mike Woods screwing up Applegate's and Corning's first names ("Rodi & Jeff," Woods said, leading Joyella to hold up a picture of Applegate stating--with a comical sneer--"this is a Jodi").

And that was Good Day New York. After the week I've had watching other morning shows ranging from the superficial to banal to downright abysmal, I think I'll keep the Good Day New York/Today mixture I've been taking.