It is completely silly - but there are definitely some BBC news programmes where the presenters swap seats, see the NC and Business Live, and usually new presenters tend to stay in the camera right for their first few programmes - you have have to wonder why this is done if there isn't some sort of semblance of a 'lead' presenter, perhaps not 'senior' however. I don't think it has one iota to do with gender though.
I think there might be, for technical reasons, a 'lead' position, but unless you have a newbie paired up with an experienced presenter, you don't really have a lead presenter as such.
I think there might be, for technical reasons, a 'lead' position, but unless you have a newbie paired up with an experienced presenter, you don't really have a lead presenter as such.
So Louise and Dan are equals yeah? Can't see it myself. In my eyes Louise is the senior presenter as Bill was before her.
People can deny the camera left seniority as much as they want, but it is a fact. Count the number of times camera left speaks first at the TOTH. How many key interviews camera left gets. How often the presenter who's been in the job longest sits camera left...
On Business Live, the presenter on the left also does the catwalk stuff, the one on the right uses the tablet and often leads the 'in the news' discussion. There's no seniority decision on who sits where - if the same pair are on duty on consecutive days they swap over.
Donkeys years ago when I worked on a double headed regional news programme, the presenter who'd done the Six headlines sat on the left when joined by the other presenter at 1830. That too swapped on a nightly basis I think (or it may have depended on which one of them was on the late shift...). I was always very careful to split the programme up between the presenters so that neither could be seen as getting more airtime than the other, by using split links, one presenter does an interview, the other then does a down-the-line, one does a newsbelt, the other then does a link on their own etc. When script checking before air (if you had time!) you occasionally discovered that a change in running order meant that inadvertently one presenter might end up not getting anything to do for a few minutes, so you'd have to rethink! On that programme at least, there was never any seniority given to the presenter in the left hand seat.
I do think that 20-30 years ago, though, the camera left position was definitely more senior.
At the BBC, camera left on the Six was always Sue Lawley, Anna Ford, Martyn Lewis - with camera right as the secondary co-presenter - Moira Stuart, Jill Dando, Jennie Bond et al.
Over at ITN, think about how many times Alastair Burnet sat camera right on News at Ten...never is the answer. He was always camera left. If not him, it was Sandy Gall - who, incidentally was always camera right when presenting with Burnet.
I do think there used to be a pecking order associated with camera left, so it's not surprising to hear questions still being raised.
I can't even watch the show but from some of his comments that can be attributed to his faith make me not care for him. Maybe if I could watch the show I'd feel differently.