AS you reflect on the desultory diet of Christmas TV, think of all those public-spirited telly folk who generously gave up their festive time to present themselves in your living rooms. Think again!

Even Her Majesty’s message was done, dusted and canned well before the first of this year’s royal grouse headed for the Sandringham cooking pot. But behind all the pre-event tinsel and ‘Happy Christmas everybody’s’ of November recording sessions, lies a dark world of envy and attrition about who gets their face on the box or in front of the microphone. It can be a precarious pitch. The latest high-profile dethronement involved the long-serving Radio 4’s Today Programme presenter Ed Stourton. His fate appears to have to have been handled with all the sensitivity of an audition for The X-Factor. But lest we get too sentimental, the employers of all our contemporary Mercurys have a responsibility to ensure professional standards as they see fit.

There’s a great temptation among the casualties to attribute their fall from grace as prejudice for whatever reason. It could just be that they simply aren’t as good as they used to be. The ‘experienced’ Selina Scott can reflect on 2008 with some satisfaction following the reported £250,000 payout by Channel 5 to soothe her bruised ego after having been passed over by more contemporary faces to front their news programme.

In France, there’s a beauty-contest battle worthy of the ringside being played out between news presenters for prominence on the nation’s main news channel, TF1. Their names won’t mean much this side of the water, but their spats have fuelled a frenzy of media interest into their private lives and relationships. Suffice it to say, we’re into the age-old territory of age, gender and pomposity. As with TV organisations all over the world, some old names get institutionalised to the point of national relics, where foibles, inconsistencies and tantrums are overlooked for too long because, frankly, such behaviour and the reams of gossip column background pull in the viewers.

It all gets to the absurd point where the messenger considers him – or herself – of greater import than the story. Regardless of their professed journalistic talent, many have long swapped a reporter’s notebook for cosy studio set-piece interviews in make-up, cocooned by production teams.

Having been in the profession since Methuselah, I’ve seen the phenomenon repeating itself over and over again. It would always start the same way; a talented – occasionally, good-looking – ambitious journalist would persistently engineer their way before the cameras, and after a while conspire to make themselves so indispensible that they were on the screen all the time. It’s called the ‘cuckoo syndrome’. Once in the nest, they ingratiate their way to ‘stardom’. The problem is, after a long career, despite ever thicker application of pre-transmission foundation and blusher, erstwhile talent can be obscured by pomposity and indolence. And, as we know, it can end in so many tears.

Of course there are those seasoned broadcasters who would never wish to exchange the thrill of the journalistic chase for the theatre of the studio. If you discount the ego reporters whose missions have included tracking down Bin Laden or liberating Kabul, there are sadly all too few genuine broadcasting heavyweights nowadays of the calibre of a Jon Snow or John Humphrys, who excel in both theatres. Nevertheless, multi-skilled young reporters are increasingly camera savvy, while the traditional role of ‘news presenter’, limited to reading an auto-cue, is under threat. Indeed, given the resourcefulness of broadcast technology, they could so easily be replaced by a computer animated puppet – remember Roland Rat!

But there’s the rub. While networks continue to rely on ‘entertainment value’ to pull in viewers, the one-dimensional TV ‘anchor’ will remain, and will generate a predictable public outcry, even early-day motions tabled in the Commons if any attempt is made to replace them. So Mr Bongs just has to go on reading the News at whatever time the schedulers keep altering it to, while profiting from the lucrative spin-offs fronting vacuous audience shows and opening supermarkets.

There’s no denying there is a gender issue involved. TV is after all a visual medium. Audiences are highly judgmental. The crusty old male presenter figure portrayed as Henry in ‘Drop the Dead Donkey’ stands a greater chance of enduring rating approval than his gracefully ageing female counterparts.

But protesting too much that the cultivation of a wrinkle or two will inevitably banish them from the TV screen, particularly if it is accompanied by a habit of castigating colleagues and employers over that perception, could indeed grease the wheels of a self-fulfilling prophesy. It also confuses professional journalism with show-biz. It’s no surprise therefore, that ‘eyes-shut’ radio generally avoids the ageist brickbats, though, as we’ve recently witnessed, it is not immune from botched dismissals; and that certainly isn’t a fate uniquely reserved for the gentler sex.

But let’s lay this age ghost. There is ample evidence that you can certainly be still taken seriously at 80. Look no further than Bruce Forsyth or June Whitfield. Joan Bakewell, formerly a prominent TV broadcaster and herself once considered a casualty of age prejudice on the box, has pursued a distinguished role in journalism and champion of the elderly, having freed herself of the media straitjacket. And even once strident leopards can change their spots. ‘Angry Anna’ Ford, who once accused her BBC bosses as ‘ageist’, is now apparently incurring the chagrin of Age Concern by advocating the retesting at 70 of Britain’s veteran motorists. It all goes to show that once seduced by the glare of media attention, it’s a hard act to switch the light off.