'Sexiest Male Newscaster' Chosen

NEW YORK – The countdown to the No. 1 sexiest male newscaster ends with ... Keith Olbermann — at least according to a Playgirl magazine online poll.

The host of MSNBC's nightly "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" had linked his Web site to the Playgirl Web site and urged viewers to vote for him. The strategy worked: He came away the winner with 24 percent of the 50,000 votes cast.

"Voter turnout was phenomenal," Michele Zipp, the magazine's editor in chief, said Monday. "Our readers jammed our e-mail server extolling the virtues of all those sexy news guys on TV."

Olbermann says any campaigning that took place was tongue-in-cheek, and definitely not his idea.

"I'd like to explain that I don't run the (Web) page — those are several of my late producers whom I have, in fact, just strangled with my bare hands," he joked. "My only interest was that I finish ahead of Andy Rooney. You want to finish sixth or eighth out of 18, just as long as you're ahead of an 85-year-old man."

That, he was. Rooney of CBS's "60 Minutes" tied for fifth place with the boyish Bill Hemmer from CNN. FOX News Channel's Sean Hannity came in second and Anderson Cooper of CNN was third. And Fox's Bill O'Reilly received about 200 write-in votes.

Complete results will be listed in the October issue.

As winner, Olbermann won't be taking it all off in Playgirl's pages. "I can state without equivocation or hesitancy that on behalf of humankind, I will not pose," he said.

The real gift he's giving: He has chosen the New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund (search) to receive $2,500 on his behalf.