This 1990 TV Guide Magazine Beauty Poll Had Angry Fans Flooding the Call Center

TV Guide Magazine: Most Beautiful Woman in Television — Courtesy TV Guide Magazine

What To Know

TV Guide Magazine’s 1990 poll asking viewers to pick the most beautiful woman on TV sparked a flood of passionate calls from fans defending their favorite stars.
The controversy highlighted the power of fan engagement and the influence of daily television exposure on public polls.

Beauty means something completely different to every single person. As they say, it truly is in the eye of the beholder. So, one can imagine the mess that might happen when, during the warm summer days of August 1990, a major magazine like TV Guide Magazine asked viewers to identify the most beautiful woman on TV in America.

The result was a really wild moment that also turned out to be a case study on how to trick the system, connect with fans and create a little bit of anger along the way.

The Aug. 25-31, 1990, cover of TV Guide Magazine read “America picks TV’s Most Beautiful Women” with a sidebar that read “Exclusive TV Guide Poll.”

According to an article written by Francesca Chapman, who was writing for the Philadelphia Daily News at the time, bewildered TV Guide Magazine readers called in to complain about the official results. Chapman noted that Jack Curry, managing editor of TV Guide at the time, said, “It’s a surprisingly pungent issue,” adding, “People out there really care about this stuff.”

Interestingly, nobody complained that a beauty contest was an old-fashioned idea. Nobody called to say the poll was not based on science. Instead, fans called to loudly defend their favorite stars. Yep, without a doubt, there were a lot of people who took this beauty contest very, very seriously.

So, who took the number one spot and caused all this drama? Who was the most beautiful woman on TV in 1990?

Anyone guessing big TV stars like Jaclyn Smith, Nicollette Sheridan or Dana Delany, who were all pictured on the cover of the issue announcing the results, would have been wrong. The winner of the 1990 TV Guide beauty poll was none other than daytime talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford.

TV Guide Magazine August 25, 1990 Beauty Poll

Courtesy TV Guide Magazine

How did she do it? How did she beat out some of the biggest TV stars of the time? Well, Gifford had a secret weapon — live daily television. It turns out that Gifford used her morning chat show, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, to ask people to vote for her over and over and over again.

And when the final results came in, Gifford did not just win; she completely obliterated the rest of the choices. She received more than five times as many votes as the second-place finisher, Jaclyn Smith.

Still, Gifford appeared genuinely shocked to win. In an article appearing in the Deseret News, dated Tuesday, August 21, 1990, talking about her competition, she said, “These are drop-dead beautiful women. I have a crooked nose. I have a crooked everything.”

The whole deal proved a very important point. The almost 18,000 people who voted for Gifford felt that they had built a special bond with her because she looked into the camera every single morning and asked them to vote for her. These voters felt like they were her friends, and regardless of whether they really felt like she was truly the most beautiful woman on TV, they wanted to see her succeed.

So why did TV Guide even bother running this massive and messy poll in the first place? Well, TV Guide boss Curry summed it up perfectly with the simple truth of the television business: “It’s the summertime, y’know. There’s nothing on television.”