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Feminism: Sex & gender discussions

Miriam O'Reilly

7 replies

Frizzbonce · 12/01/2011 16:24

Isn't it marvellous that she's won the case? She interviewed me once for Woman's Hour, standing in for Jenni Murray and was absolutely professional and lovely.

The sad thing is everyone who has ever worked for the BBC knows they are obsessed with 'diversity' and youth and the place is run by short, middle aged white men, but it's taken Miriam to stand up and prove it. I'm delighted. Although depressingly the blogsphere is already filling up with 'oh so we'll have lots of old, ugly people on telly now?' FFS.

What they mean is 'old women' - there are already shedloads of men on telly with faces like melted wellies.

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sethstarkaddersmum · 12/01/2011 16:27

rofl @ 'faces like melted wellies'!

started a thread on this yesterday, hang on a min and I will find it.

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Frizzbonce · 12/01/2011 16:28

Oooh ta sethstarkaddersmum - I thought there might be something and didn't want to hijack.

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sethstarkaddersmum · 12/01/2011 16:28

here y'are

what were you doing on Woman's Hour?

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Frizzbonce · 12/01/2011 16:35

I had written a WH comedy/drama about the history of girls comics: Girl, Bunty, Jackie etc and the commissioning ed thought it would be a good idea to interview me and a 'comics expert' on the subject!

Thanks for the link - hopping over there now!

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Frizzbonce · 12/01/2011 16:41

And one of the most telling points raised by the tribunal is this:
The discrimination was not justified. The wish to appeal to a prime-time audience, including younger viewers, is a legitimate aim. However, we do not accept that it has been established that choosing younger presenters is required to appeal to such an audience

So the BBC (run by white, middle aged - short - that's very important) men are obsessed with youth but their get-rid-of-the menopausal-old-bat-and-stick-a-pretty-face-in-there-instead formula doesn't get the audiences in. Julian Fellowes, the Oscar winning script writer, has said that television executives are 'obsessed with this mythical youth audience,' whereas the average age of the televison watcher is 52. Drama in particular is watched by older people, but ask any script writer and they will tell you the first words out of the executives' mouths will be: 'Can we cast young?'

Actually that's very depressing.

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sethstarkaddersmum · 12/01/2011 17:10

wow, how cool!
I would love to hear that.

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sethstarkaddersmum · 12/01/2011 17:12

(that was of course in response to the comedy drama about the history of comics, not the short BBC executives.)

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