With shocking inevitability, tits-on-a-stick dullard Holly Willoughby (albeit an attractive one in a very manufactured way) has been named as the new This Morning presenter. No more middle aged, mumsy Fern. No, now everyone has to be under 25 (if you're a woman, at least).
First Moira Stewart, then Kate Adie, more recently Arlene Phillips and now Fern is replaced by a younger model. Why is it that the powers that be think TV audiences will switch off if they have to watch a mature woman? Are we so dumbed down that a big white smile a shiny pair of norks are going to make us blithely tune in? The This Morning audience, mainly made up of Fern Britten types I should imagine, probably want someone similar. I never thought I'd say it, but even Fiona Phillips might have been a better choice.
The people who make these decisions (who I know to be under 40 themselves), should be taken out and shot. They're not doing what people want and we can see right through their ageism. Note to them: No one minds older people on TV. Your audience is mainly over 55. Teens and twenties have no time for TV. WAKE UP!
Holly Willoughby is a useless, vacuous living doll with a 1970s country and western singer's wig (and she's Tamzin Outhwaite's sister-in-law, fact fans), and the sight of her and Phillip Schofield is plain creepy. She's got no interest in anyone but herself and she's going to be an absolute disaster.
Can we stop this Stepfording of TV before it's too late? Or is it too late already?
10 comments:
I keep mixing up Holly Willoughby with Fearne Cotton. An easy mistake to make? How will she fare with the problem phone-ins, for instance?
I don't really have an opinion on This Morning otherwise, but the Arlene replacing on Strictly Come Dancing is incredibly wrong-headed. She may have been outspoken and rude and all that, but unlike, say, Simon Cowell, or Piers Morgan, she hasn't spent her life peddling nothing but crap before sitting in judgment on the efforts of other people. For one thing, she choreographed Every Sperm is Sacred for Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. She knows what she's talking about. How she's been axed and the two regular hosts retained is beyond me.
Sorry, there was something else...
No matter how ridiculous Madeley and Finnigan may look now, and may have always looked to some, they did at least have a background that Schofield and certainly Willoughby do not have. They had worked in current affairs, not just live TV, and so at least had some kind of understanding of the serious bits that a programme like This Morning could sometimes tackle. For all her faults, Fern Britton also had that, to some extent. I haven't seen TM for some time now, but had it already banished any serious stuff and just homed in on celeb culture, chefs and fashion? It wasn't always so. This'll only water it down further.
You shouldn't just give gigs to ex-children's TV presenters.
Although I'm no Holly fan (she reminds me of a big-eyed cartoon cow, aimiably chewing the cud and batting its lashes), I quibble with the concept that Fiona Philips would have been better. Fiona Philips is about as bad as it could have got, surely? Someone bland with no opinions has to at least be less offensive than someone with FP's skullful of half-digested pea-brained diatribes.
I think she'll do just fine and was the best from the line up.
Who else was shortlisted? Davina, yes?
They're all awful. Someone off Loose Women would have been preferable, not that I watch This Morning. How long before Loose Women are replaced by younger models.
So if you're under 30, you're awful? That wouldn't go down well with a lot of my younger friends. And I suspect they wouldn't care to have their breasts brought into the equation either.
That's not at all what I'm saying Empress, but what's wrong with a bit of maturity in presenter - and by that I mean someone of advancing years? Do you want every programme taken over by the under-25s? Perhaps you do.
You raised some pertinent points on ageism but the other comments weren't really my cup of tea.
It sounds like you're creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their is a problem in the first place.
Post a Comment