BBC Radio 4 has announced that it will commission a female-led panel show called Where’s the F In News, which will be created and presented by Jo Bunting, the producer of Have I Got News For You.
The station is aiming to readdress the gender balance issue on panel shows, and says the ‘predominantly female show’ will be ‘an energetic and intelligent female-anchored show’ with ‘a shedload of intelligent and funny women’.
The criticism around male-heavy panel shows urged the BBC’s director of TV, Danny Cohen, to declare in 2014 that the BBC would no longer make panel shows that did not have women on them as it is ‘unacceptable’.
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When speaking about her motivation behind creating the upcoming female-led panel show, Jo Bunting, who has also appeared of TV shows such as Loose Women and This Morning, said: ‘Apparently if a woman speaks in a meeting for 50 percent of the time a man speaks, he genuinely thinks she’s spoken the exact same amount of time he has. When I read that, I thought, how can I really annoy that man?’
Her answer to this was to create a topical radio show where the host and most of the guests will be women, where ‘events, trends and talking points’ will be used ‘as a starting point for a number of fresh and funny challenges’.
Where’s The F In News is just one of 35 separate commissions BBC Radio 4 has confirmed for 2018 and 2019, which range from panels and sitcoms to stand-up comedy one-offs and returning series’.
Sioned William, Commissioning Editor for Comedy on Radio 4, said: ‘It’s a delight to welcome another incredible bunch of comedians to the come of radio comedy, and to showcase such a range of talent through this extensive line-up of new shows.’
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