TV sofas - the politics of the left and the right

In our shallow, insecure times, people place great store in where they sit. It's something which has become increasingly felt at companies operating 'hot desking' policies, where workers no longer sit at the same place automatically, thus preventing desks from filling up with personal photographs, 'amusing' signs about not being mad to work there, and accumulated lunch detritus.

When it first began in - where else? - Silicon Valley during the dot-com boom, hot desking wasn't perceived as a sign of disappearing job security. It was embraced as part of the zany, anything-goes, free-yourself-from-convention culture that went with all those skateboarding, surf shorts-wearing offices in California.

"That's my spot"

But when the practice spread to corporate offices in Europe, where notions of employment security have a very different texture, the idea of workers not expecting to have "their spot" each day came as a shock. Not knowing quite what the etiquette was, passive-agressive disputes broke out over computer mice or the adjustment of seat heights. But old habits die slowly, and even in offices with no allocated seating, people generally still plonk where they've always plonked...until some interloper appears to upset the peace.

In television, where you sit is important. In the Sky newsroom some years ago, there was a large and fairly uncompromising Kiwi by the name of Scott Chisholm, who co-presented evening news bulletins. Chisholm had his spot, and few seemed willing or brave enough to challenge it. There was something clearly of the animal kingdom about all this.

And thus it proved when another newsroom alpha, Chris Mann, appeared in that part of the Osterley safari park and had the temerity to use Chisholm's desk, possibly out of provocation. At some point afterwards - I can't now remember the exact chronology - Chisholm and Mann ended up in a clothed version of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed's wrestling match in Women In Love, resulting in Mann taking a trip to the Royal Free Hospital in north London. Trebles and sackings all round.

BBC

Hopefully, then, things won't end up quite so testosterone-fuelled on the set of BBC Breakfast, where the clean-cut vicar's son Dan Walker (he of Football Focus and not working on Sundays on religious grounds fame) has just replaced the retiring Bill Turnbull after 15 years on the famous red couch.

Without so much as a by-your-leave, Walker was installed in Turnbull's old spot, on the right-hand side of the sofa - the 'camera left' position as the viewer sees it. This apparently caused viewer Adele Clarke great umbrage, and she wrote to Radio Times to complain that Breakfast producers were being horrendously sexist and that by rights, the longer-standing co-anchor Louise Minchin should now be automatically 'promoted' to the left of frame as the senior presenter.

In few other professions where you sit counts. A judge, obviously. A school headmaster, possibly. On an aircraft, the captain - and therefore commander - always sits in the left-hand seat. That IS a convention of authority. In all these cases, none are a matter of gender, either.

In the case of its flagship breakfast show, however, the BBC maintains that who-sits-where has nothing to do with seniority, but one of aesthetics. Breakfast producers apparently screen-tested Minchin in the camera left position and Walker camera right, but it just didn't work visually. That should be obvious: Walker is 6ft 6in and, as any photographer will tell you, putting that in the middle would just look weird - and if anything, would have made Walker even more prominent.

Chris Evans - a tall bloke himself, and who always sat camera-left to Gabby Roslin on The Big Breakfast - refutes the BBC's visual argument as "absolute tosh", but then I've never seen him sat anywhere else when there's a co-presenter to his side. Photographic composition has to count, even on a news programme, but that clearly hasn't been what this brouhaha has been about.

BBC

What Minchin herself thinks about it all is not fully clear. Tittle-tattle travels fast from wine bar to wine bar in medialand, though, and given the leaky-sieve nature of most newsrooms, it's no surprise that there are murmurings that she was pushing for the perceived prize spot on the Breakfast sofa, but then this is so far unsubstantiated. Frankly, though, until the subject came up in the Radio Times, I don't think anyone had thought less of her sitting to Walker's left, or any more of Walker sitting to her right.

That hasn't stopped a full-on media storm, of the kind only the media likes to create for its own amusement. In today's Guardian, Miriam O'Reilly - who sued the BBC for ageism after she was dropped as presenter of Countryfile - blamed "deep-rooted misogyny" in TV newsrooms for the left-right arrangement and the apparently unspoken rule that the senior presenter always sits on the left-hand side of the screen.

I agree that ageism is endemic in television, but then there are so many 'isms' in the entertainment business as a whole. Whether it's good roles for older women in Hollywood or that Bruce Forsyth was (until his departure) too old to host Strictly Come Dancing, there's always strong argument that such biases exist. The counter argument is always that television, like cinema, is a visual art, and therefore if it looks good, it probably is good. After all, did we ever get wound up by Valerie Singleton, Peter Purves and John Noakes sitting in that order on Blue Peter?

TV news journalists, however, do get annoyed by such things. They consider themselves serious journalists rather than light entertainers (though the editorial agenda of Breakfast sometimes says otherwise...). Authority counts perhaps as much as it does for the airline pilot. Positioning Minchin as the lead presenter of Breakfast is no bad thing. Few have raised the fact that Walker is younger than her, which means that she now has what looks like a lanky teenager in his first suit sat next to her. That should indicate seniority to begin with, but in television - as so many aspects of life - perception is nine-tenths of reality. Personally, until Ms. Clarke's letter came up, I - and I suspect most people - probably never gave it any thought. It's just two people on television, with a director, in the case of Breakfast, ensuring that his or her choice of shots is as visually appealing as they are editorially beneficial.

However, what this argument seems to forget is that television is also an aural medium, and none more so than breakfast news when viewers are only paying partial attention to what's on the screen. Who speaks, rather than where they sit is just as important. That's why awkward moments are so commonplace when two TV presenters can't decide who is going to read what on the Autocue. Perhaps, then, the real issue is deciding who gets to say "Good morning, you're watching BBC Breakfast with X and me, Y" than who has a hierarchical superiority based on where they sit.

In America, however, things are less subtle. As Anchorman's Ron Burgundy highlighted so brilliantly there are unbreakable formulas in television news. Visit any US city and watch the local evening bulletins: there will usually be the slightly older, seasoned male hack sat next to the younger, perfectly-coiffed hackette. I've probably never even noticed it, but the convention of man-left, woman-right is no doubt upheld pretty much everywhere. What you then get is the over-excitable "sports" guy to their right and a weather presenter clamped to their left. That is, surely, convention, but also perhaps one of familiarity (much like American supermarkets, whose layouts are always - to me at least - exactly the same).

TV producers are not stupid. In Los Angeles I often used to watch the frankly ridiculous 'zoo' madness of Fox's Good Day LA, a morning news show which seemed focused solely around its venerable anchor Steve Edwards. Either side of him, weather presenter Jillian Barberie and entertainment reporter Dorothy Lucey basically talked over each other. Producers presumably thought this gonzo coffee-and-cacophany format 'wacky'. All the viewer got was a silver-haired news veteran and two screeching blondes engaged in often incomprehensible banter. That's not a sexist comment - it was so obvious what was going on.

Back in the UK, Sky News, like its American cousins in the Murdoch empire, has never been short of criticism that its on-air talent is there more for aesthetic appeal (Adam Boulton not withstanding...) than news credibility. There's no doubt that Sky's presenter roster is blessed with what could be politely termed "visual appeal", but to its credit, there are also some very good journalists who front bulletins. Ever since it launched in 1989, Sky News has mainly operated a two-anchor approach and, yes, often with the male anchor to the left, but not always.

Sky

Sarah-Jane Mee - a very good anchor indeed - currently holds the 'primary' role on Sky News' Sunrise while Eamonn Holmes recovers from hip surgery (notably Gillian Joseph also takes taking the hot seat at weekends). Nobody seems to have an issue with any of these arrangements, and no one makes a big deal out of them - it's simply what works for Sky.

And, at no point has it been suggested that there is any inferiority to the whoever takes the co-presenter seat. That said, Holmes himself only underwent the surgery after putting it off for years fearing that he didn't want to be seen as "old" through television's notoriously youth-obsessed eyes (he's 55). That, back to O'Reilly's comments, is the bigger issue.