Just 5% of TV presenters are women over age of 50
Older men outnumber them by four to one, analysis reveals
FOR the men in television, grey hair is a sign of gravitas. For the women, it’s a sign they won’t be in television much longer.
Just 5 per cent of the presenters on our screens are women over 50, a study has shown.
Women account for nearly half of younger presenters, but that figure plummets to just one in five – 18 per cent – of older ones.
In the wake of the report, MPs and senior presenters accused Britain’s main broadcasters of ‘ airbrushing’ older women from our screens.
The figures were gathered by the Older Women’s Commission, set up by Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman.
‘They get cleared from our screens’
Miss Harman said: ‘ Older women fall into a black hole in broadcasting. They suddenly get cleared from our screens.
‘It is not that women aren’t there. It is that they get to a certain age, then they find they are near the exit and they get pushed out the door.
‘You have to look as youthful as you can up to the age of 50. After 50, your days are numbered. That has got to change.’
Yesterday Esther Rantzen, 72, told the Daily Mail she would ‘collapse in shock’ if she was offered another mainstream presenting job.
She also accused the BBC of using consumer show Rip Off Britain – hosted by Angela Rippon, 68, Gloria Hunniford, 73, and Julia Somerville, 65 – as a ‘nature reserve for old ladies’.
In recent years, several high-profile female presenters, including Selina Scott, 62, and Anna Ford, 69, have complained about their treatment by major broadcasters.
Former Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly, 56, who won a landmark ageism case against the BBC in 2011, said the latest figures were ‘ shocking’ and accused the corporation of lagging behind some other TV networks.
Out of 413 regular presenters, the BBC employs 25 women aged over 50 – for example Newsnight host Kirsty Wark, 58. This is still better than Channel 5 and ITN, which do not employ any older women presenters at all, and Sky, which has only one.
They were all outperformed by ITV, which said 55 per cent of its presenters over 55 were women. The broadcaster said it was unable to supply figures in the same format as its TV rivals.
Yet the l atest Ofcom f i gures show over-55s watch an average of 5.3 hours of TV each day, more than an hour above the national average.
Former That’s Life presenter Miss Rantzen said: ‘It is not the viewers voting older women off the screen, absolutely not that. It is very strange.
‘[Rip Off Britain] is a terrific programme and the women are very
‘A black hole in broadcasting’
good journalists and very good presenters, but it is as if it’s some sort of special nature reserve for old ladies.
‘It is almost as if in television, if you employ an old lady, it becomes a conscious gesture. We have got to have our token old lady.’
She added: ‘I guest a lot, I get invited to appear and be interviewed and that sort of thing. But I think if anybody invited me to present a programme I might collapse in shock.’
Miss Hunniford, of Rip Off Britain, declined to comment on Miss Rantzen’s remarks, but said she did not feel age had impeded her career. ‘I went in to broadcasting in 1969 and I have never had to look for a job and I have never been out of work and at the minute I am busier than I have ever been,’ she said.
Miss Harman, who is also the shadow culture secretary, met senior TV executives from the BBC, ITV, ITN, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky to discuss the f i ndings yesterday.
Among those at the meeting were Roger Mosey, the BBC’s editorial director, and Jane Luca, controller of external affairs at ITV.
Miss Harman said the executives agreed to make a firm commitment to female presenters now in their 40s that they would not be sidelined as they got older.
At the BBC, those include newsreader Fiona Bruce, 49, who has previously told how she does not dare let her grey hairs show.