Samira Ahmed resigns

[MisterDarsey]

Sorry to give you yet another thing to get pissed off about but I was truly gobsmacked by this

Channel 4 presenter quits after bosses say: Your hair's scruffy

But on age and women - yes. You are right, sunshine. And the BBC has recently bowed to pressure to recruit more female newscasters over 50. There shouldn't have had to be that pressure, should there? So there is definitely a problem with age-based sex discrimination against women, on TV in general. All the clever, older women end up on Radio 4, regardless of how attractive they are.

And has anyone else noticed that chat show hosts in the UK are always male? The US doesn't seem to have a problem with female hosts. Grr.

Jon Snow has ludicrous ties. He gets a lot sent into him and he always picks a really loud outlandish one to wear. That's what he said on an interview I heard a few years back.

Honestly look at his ties, they are almost always garish to the max, always makes me smile I imagine an old lady somewhere sending him one and getting a real kick

Can't imagine that a female presenter would be allowed to do anything like that, TBH.

I've always had a bit of a thing for krishnan guru-murthy (sp) as well...

Sorry not really on topic am I

Ha. You know it, (as do I)Speedy

Judging from my experience of work, I am still convinced there is both racism and sexism at play.

1. The demotion to reporter is often the outcome for older female journalists.
2. The article mentions the production team wanting wanting to impress another executive team....I can see some little shit producer getting all het up about her not presenting a Sky News glossy' image
3. Being good at recruiting ethnic minorities at junior levels is not the same as being able to support the senior level team...how diverse are their senior production/presentation/management teams I wonder?

I bet it's cos she's 42 as well.
Also because there is nothing patriarchy-compliant about her look; she is very attractive IMO but not in a girly primped up way.

I am gutted, I love Samira Ahmed.

If there's a new line up I doubt it'll be all male but there if there are any new women what are the chances they'll be young and pretty?

they are all good-looking Speedy but a woman wouldn't be allowed to stay on tv if she put on as much weight as Krishnan Gurumurthy has.

vesuvia, I wan't very clear, it was Sue Turton who got groped by a random fuckwit while she was broadcasting. Just in case it sounded like I meant Samira.

Anyway. This stinks and I hope ITN won't get away with it.

Sybil - damn right. He is still gorgeous, but I don't see any fat women presenting anything on TV.

actually I've just thought of one, Fern thingy.

but that's a magazine programme, are there any fat woman newsreaders?

Even Fern Britton had a gastric band to lose weight.

There have been a couple of female chat show hosts:
Trisha, Caroline Aherne/Mrs Merton

But you're right, MASSIVELY outnumbered by male hosts.

As for female newscasters, where I worked, the main TV news anchor had straight blonde hair (!) but still lost her contract after several years of enduring popularity because the management (I have good reason to believe) had decided she was getting too old (yup, ageism is awful when it comes to female tv presenters) and too expensive (she had a good agent).
Certainly, the female presenter/s that replaced her were all younger and cheaper....

It's bollocks, the lot of it. Pah.

Trisha doesn't count - that's a trash show, not a chat show.

Emily Maitliss, Kirsty Wark and Martha Kearney all have a good slew of appearances on Newsnight, at least. But are Mrs Merton and Davina's failed show the only examples of British women hosting mainstream chat shows in the past 20 years? Seriously? This cannot be down to a lack of female talent

I love Samira Ahmed (and her curly hair)

So few women in public life with curly hair. It's not seen as SERIOUS. Do you remember how Chelsea Clinton had to loose her curls to be taken at all seriously?

Women on TV have to have completely different hair than in real life. I have a friend who reads the news on a major channel. On screen her hemet hair looks 'normal' for TV-land but if I ever bump into her on her way home from studio, out on the street it is so clear NOONE has hair like that .

I think the thing they're not saying about Samira Ahmed is that she is going a bit thin on top, and god forbid they would have a balding woman on TV. I think that is why they've pushed her out.

I don't think this is about curly hair. The article mentioned that Cathy Newman is coming on board as a presenter. Cathy Newman has super curly hair. But it is groomed. This is more likely about women presenters being held to a higher standard of grooming and conventional attractiveness than men.

The curly thing really is a problem, isn't it? Well, obviously not a REAL problem, but a perceived one for TV people. This is a horrible story.

You know, it's odd. Newman's hair is wavy, not "super curly". But it's not that dissimilar to Ahmed's. So could it be down to Ahmed's apparent hair loss (which I've never noticed)? Or perhaps they just don't like her and were making up excuses.