With Adam Boulton's departure from Sky News, have silver fox anchors had their day? – Aidan Smith

Can you name all of The Magnificent Seven? There’s usually one who gets missed and it's the same with The Morecambe & Wise Seven.

What would 'Anchorman' Ron Burgundy, played by Will Ferrell, right, think? Older male newsreaders could be on their way out (Picture: Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for Funny or Die)

The western’s least-remembered is probably Horst Buchholz while the most-forgotten in the comedy duo’s tribute to Hollywood musicals featuring a septet of BBC dependables would likely be the film buff, Philip Jenkinson.

But the newsreaders in that 1977 Christmas show are imprinted on our minds because it was such a shock to see them sing and somersault in sailor suits.

Eddie Waring, the rugby league commentator, had previously larked about on It’s a Knockout but newsreaders back then really didn’t do this sort of thing. Of all the dependables they were the dependabliest. I’m sorry, I’ll say that again: they were the most boring.

Maybe not boring, but sober, straight, staid. They had to be. News was news, serious stuff. To be intoned solemnly, imparted without even the merest hint of a conspiratorial raised eyebrow. Until that sensational moment we didn’t even know these guys had legs.

One of the musicals celebrated by Eric and Ernie would have been Anchors Aweigh. Now, though, is it Anchormen Away? Is the reign of the middle-age, male presenter of prime-time news finally – “And finally … ” – at an end?

Adam Boulton is leaving Sky News. His boss John Ryley had just declared that TV was moving on from the era of “all-powerful anchors” so Boulton’s sign-off has something of Smashie and Nicey about it, if you remember how the berkish DJs raced their boss across the studios in an attempt to blurt “we quit!” before he could confirm: “You’re sacked!”

Boulton, who’s 62, says that “baby-boomers” like him and fellow Sky man Dermot Murnaghan, 63, have “had their day”, adding that Jon Snow, 74, is stepping down from Channel 4 News while Huw Edwards, 60, has hinted he may not be the face of BBC News for very much longer.

Anchors of mature years used to command the same respect – engendering the same reassurance and relief – as airline pilots displaying grey around the temples when crossing the airport tarmac to take control of the summer holiday exodus.

Just as the latter gave the impression they were not about to crash into a Spanish mountain range, so the newsreaders could be relied upon to navigate a safe passage through the hectic events of the day.

Now TV’s silver foxes are on the brink of becoming extinct. To be replaced how – by younger presenters as part of the ongoing drive to attract a more youthful audience to TV? This has been futile, though – kids are not in thrall to the idiot-lantern like my generation were and still are.

There was a golden moment in the depths of lockdown when all six of us in my house sat down to watch TV together, like we were recreating the front cover of an ancient edition of the Radio Times, agog at the Coronation, Winston Churchill’s funeral or man setting foot on the Moon. But the moment has passed and my children are back in their bedrooms, back on TikTok and YouTube.

Some would say Boulton – 32 years at Sky – and his kind have had good innings and that’s true. But what price experience come a general election – especially experience of anchoring wee-small-hours coverage of many previous elections? Incalculable and invaluable, I’d say.

Boulton can see which way the wind is blowing in Tellyland which right now, he says, is “very sensitive to the idea of diversity”. If ethnic minorities were under-represented on the small-screen before – and TV definitely used to be too white – then at least one study suggested that, if the medium is still attempting to be true to its original aim of being a window on the world, they’re over-represented now. Certainly police incident rooms are nothing like as multicultural as they are depicted in some crime dramas.

Ryley envisages a news future that is reporter-led, the correspondents being the “experts”. But tell me if this irritates you: the anchor introduces a filmed report which concludes, then it’s back to the studio where the anchor... proceeds to interview the author of said report. Did he/she forget some important detail? Are they just hanging around to see if their work makes the bulletin?

Yes, and this is almost as irritating as a reporter filing late at night from outside an office or building pertaining to the story but the place is in total darkness and there’s no chance of a minion rushing up to the cameras with a fresh update/admission of guilt/recommendation the tenacious truthseeker be put forward for the Pulitzer Prize.

Maybe, though, I’m just showing my age but I’m not so old that I remember when anchors – or newscasters as they used to be called – wore dinner jackets.

That was when the news was trusted implicitly; no one could conceive of there ever being something called fake news. When John Cleese aped a newsreader to announce, “And now for something completely different … ”, even the crazed minds of Monty Python did not predict how the profile of the anchors would be transformed: how Angela Rippon bursting from her desk to dance would become the story; how Jan Leeming’s pronunciation of “Mujahideen” would drive male viewers wild with desire. Until one of her earrings popped out, ruining the fantasy.

In Scotland, Mary Marquis’ earrings held fast, just like her steepling tower of hair. And John Toye’s never bounced onto the table either. Maybe the long, slow death of the anchors began with The Morecambe & Wise Seven.

Maybe the silver foxes feel like they’re up against The Magnificent Seven in a shootout they can’t win. Well, remember this, TV bosses: we baby-boomers are still the people who actually watch the goggle-box.

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