NEW YORK - Will Ferrell's title character in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" is faced with a serious female colleague for the first time. Diversity is the reason, he's told. But he thinks diversity is the name of an old wooden ship from the Civil War.

A San Diego anchorman in the '70s, Burgundy is the latest in a line of Hollywood anchormen dating back to Ted Baxter of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (1970-77) who by turns are pompous, vain, vacuous, and living by the slogan: Sincerity - once you can fake that, the world is yours.

Dave Tolchinsky, an associate professor of radio-TV-film at Northwestern University, thinks viewers are often wondering about the sincerity of the anchor's emotions on camera.

"The movie `Broadcast News' made a big deal out of the fact that the William Hurt character should 'pretend' to cry," he recalled. "Now I think most people assume that anchorpeople are faking it - faking the emotion, faking the chatter and lively banter ..."

He noted that Jim Carrey's "Bruce Almighty" echoes "Broadcast News" but with a slightly different spin: Ultimately, it's Bruce's refreshing honesty that sets him apart from the anchors.

One of Tolchinsky's colleagues at Northwestern, Chuck Kleinhans, suggested that women escape the same Hollywood rap as anchormen because it's generally assumed they had to work harder than a man to achieve the same level of success. Thus Christina Applegate's character in "Anchorman" is ambitious and capable.

As unvarying as the comic depictions of the men have been, you might think they're based on truth. Well, they are - to some extent.

People in TV news admit they've known a Ron Burgundy, but they maintain that such types are anomalies who quickly disappear.

Ferrell, the film's co-screenwriter who consulted with at least five local anchormen across the country for his role, agreed.

"If anything, what we discovered was actually the opposite of what we depicted in the movie," he told The Associated Press. "These guys ... were very educated, very smart guys who really took pride in what they did."

Jill Geisler,

who joined the Poynter Institute in 1998 after a 25-year career at Milwaukee's WITI-TV, maintains that the Burgundys don't last long.

"The Ron Burgundys of this world are found out pretty darn soon. They're the people who don't get to work Election Night," she said, "or they don't get called in to work the big developing story ... that cannot be scripted."