Jayne Dowle: The autocuties lose their sense of direction

It hardly seems demanding. Unlike a "proper" television journalist, you don't even have to leave the studio and get your hair wet in the rain. No wonder female television presenters – or "autocuties" as they are known – receive so much stick. Even the news presenters are branded as vacuous airheads, there to provide a bit of eye-candy to the serious, grown-up – and inevitably male – co-presenter.

I can remember when Emily Maitlis got her first Newsnight slot. Judging by the comments on her blonde hair and her short hemlines, you could have been forgiven for thinking that 30-odd years of feminism had never happened.

There was me thinking that presenters read the headlines, not make them, but it was like, "gosh, attractive woman who understands economic policies shock". Was it really that long since Angela Rippon caused a stir when she became the BBC's first regular female newsreader, because it certainly doesn't feel like it. Here we are in the digital age and we're still having a debate that was raging when I still had a black and white TV.

Now Katie Derham, anchor of ITN's lunchtime news with Alastair Stewart for the past six years, and the new host of the BBC's Proms, has slammed those who dismiss young female news presenters as "dim". As a 40-year-old mother and a Cambridge economics graduate, she has some justification for being a bit cross. She is also annoyed that people accused her of gazing in doe-eyed wonder at Mr Stewart, 58, as the closing credits rolled. And to be honest, her answer, "but that's because I adore him", hardly does her any favours in the credibility stakes, Cambridge degree and two children or not.

I am trying to imagine some kind of parallel universe where you would have a young male presenter paired with an older woman, and I'm finding it almost impossible. Watching the news is like real life mirrored on the screen, isn't it? Not many people bat an eyelid at a fifty-something man with a younger woman on his arm, but reverse the proportions and the couple might as well put themselves in a freak show.

To be fair, however doe-eyed they might appear, it is not right to put all the blame for this ridiculous state of affairs on the presenters themselves.

They don't make the programmes or devise the running order or agonise over the nightly line-up. It's the channel bosses and producers who decide that. All they need, really, is the talent to sit behind the desk.

And I think it's about time that the talent realised that this is exactly what they are. All they do is turn up and talk for a living. But to listen them whinge, you would think they were performing daily tracheotomies, at the very least. Just witness all the reported hissy fits over the BBC's proposal to move its breakfast news programme to the new MediaCity in Salford.

It's not often I find myself in agreement with Salford MP Hazel Blears, but she's put into words exactly what I had been thinking. If the likes of Chris Hollins, best-known for his performance on Strictly Come Dancing, don't want to move north with their department, then there is one simple answer. Tell them to stay where they are and we'll get some Northerners to do their jobs instead. If any other kind of organisation was to relocate and the staff didn't fancy it, then no-one would be running around in circles trying to appease them, especially in this economic climate. The HR department would just put an advert in the job centre.

However inflated their egos might be, these prima donna presenters should remember that a) no-one is indispensable and b) there is no rule which says that all television presenters should be based in west London and speak with nice round vowels. And if the BBC was to look local, then there is a chance that we might end up with some presenters with a bit of edge, not in a comedy Terry Christian kind of way, but in the outspoken, upfront, challenging sense. Come on BBC, you talk about the exciting new future of broadcasting all the time, so why not really break the mould? This is your chance to throw everything up in the air, and revolutionise our viewing.

Until that time, then I'm determined not to waste my life watching too much television, especially in the mornings when all that beaming and meaningful eye-contact makes me want to hurl my breakfast at the screen. Call me old-fashioned, but I know where I am with Radio Four. And I wouldn't even know if Sarah Montague was interviewing the

Prime Minister in her pyjamas and holding hands with James Naughtie under the desk.