KFSM: From TV to T and A

In a Feb. 13 news segment about teen sex, KFSM-TV, Channel 5 showed footage of Springdale High School students that had been filmed the previous night at an annual Sadie Hawkins dance. The station didn’t explain that the costumes weren’t normal attire for the students.

Sadie Hawkins was a character in the Al Capp comic strip Li’l Abner. She first appeared in 1937 dressed in skimpy hillbilly attire and looking for a husband.

Since then, Sadie Hawkins dances have become popular on college campuses nationwide as events where women ask men to the dance and the couples frequently show up dressed as Li’l Abner characters.

In a letter to The Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, Ryan Langston, a senior at Springdale High School, wrote that “the reporter misrepresented the facts” turning the dance into “an R-rated movie with camera shots showing close-ups of female dancers and their dates.”

“While I understand TV ratings are important to Channel 5, I disagree with their exploitation and misrepresentation at Springdale High School,” Langston wrote in the letter that was published Feb. 27 in the Morning News. “In actuality, the only negative occurrence at the dance was KFSM’s presence.”