Breakfast menu

I hope Lucy Adams, BBC HR chief, has set up a caring-sharing-helpline for concerned middle-aged male local radio Breakfast presenters. They'll be spending the weekend checking their contracts, pensions, AVCs and mortgage statements and phoning station managers to demand Monday meetings, as Lord Hall sets a target for 50% female presentation across 40 or so local radio breakfast programmes by the end of 2014.

There is, often, an easy way to do this - many shows have women as newsreaders, travel, weather, and even sport presenters. They could just be added to the billings - but, if they're sensible, equal billing means equal pay, and I wonder if local radio has been given a budget to do this. Other stations could rotate capable women from elsewhere in the schedule to breakfast slots - but that, honestly, doesn't do much to ease the overall diversity problem.

From the way they're billed on iPlayer today, around 30 stations need to think about change (I accept it's a snapshot, doesn't cover some opt-out shows, and a may feature holiday relief presenters or Friday stand-ins). While we're on about diversity, the photos below suggest 2 ethnic minority presenters out of 52.