In today's fast-paced, competitive society, attracting the attention of viewers has become increasingly challenging. Consequently, in broadcast business news, the communicative function of newscasters' and presenters' overall appearance may be highly significant in securing and sustaining viewership in more than one way. This article arose out of a preliminary, exploratory study of mediated business news as part of a larger project that aims to develop and use computer-based technology for modeling, analyzing, and retrieving qualitative meaning from multimodal phenomena. In this article, the authors approach the current topic from within a social semiotic perspective on the premise that any kind of semiotic system (clothing included) functions to make three kinds of meanings simultaneously (although one type of meaning may take precedence over another): a) "experiential" meaning, which is concerned with how we represent experience; (b) "interpersonal" meaning, which expresses the relationship between communicating parties and their audiences; and (c) "textual" or "compositional" meaning, which is concerned with how the text is structured to make meaning as a whole. Their preliminary analysis of the differing clothing choices of male and female newscasters on broadcast business news has tried to reveal the subtle differences in their respective communicative functions as well as their differing gender roles.