TV sexism row as ZERO women feature across Saturday night schedules
TEN men dominated Saturday night TV - without a single female presenter fronting any of BBC1 or ITV1’s biggest entertainment shows.
Bradley Walsh appeared THREE times on a trio of programmes first on quiz show The Chase then with his son Barney on Gladiators and a later episode of Breaking Dad.
To add insult to injury, two of the biggest shows were previously fronted by two famous women - Anne Robinson, who originally made quiz The Weakest Link a hit, and Gladiators, which was famously fronted by Ulrika Jonsson.
The biggest exposure a female star got on Saturday night was Davina McCall on The Masked Singer alongside four other men.
A TV insider said: “TV bosses like to think they’re terribly woke when it comes to who they have on screen for different shows at different times, but the schedules prove they’ve dropped the ball.
“It’s particularly glaring because some of Saturday night TV’s biggest stars used to be women including Ulrika as well as Blind Date legend Cilla Black and Anneka Rice on Challenge Anneka.
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“At a time when TV is supposed to be more diverse, they’ve failed to represent half the population.”
The ten men - who fronted nine of the biggest Saturday night shows - are Bradley Walsh and son Barney, Michael McIntyre, Romesha Ranganathan, Alexander Armstrong, Richard Osman, Graham Norton, Joel Dommett as well as Ant & Dec.
ITV1 were particularly guilty as almost their entire schedule on Saturday featured men, starting with David Dickinson, Alan Titchmarsh, James Martin and Ben Shephard.
The only show with a prominent woman on ITV1 was at 10.55pm - a documentary about a woman, Ashley Wadsworth, who was a murder victim.
Romesh was the only non-white male, and the average age is 47.