When I looked into guidelines for front paging, I read (on somenode) that the node under consideration should be on topic and well written - reflecting well on the Monastery.
tye's remarks notwithstanding, I wouldn't like to see a lot of cruft and dreck on the front page just because it's a "slow news day". If there aren't enough good nodes to keep the FP fresh, I think that reflects a different problem.
I would support the suggestion to raise the FP privilege by 2 or more monk levels. That small change would be easy to implement, easy to understand and, I think, it would have the desired effect.