FRENCH television has been accused of age discrimination against its stars. Yet it is not the middle-aged and upwards who are being marginalised; it is the young and supposedly trendy.

Le Monde said that “senior presenters” had “engulfed” news programmes, variety shows and drama series. Guy Dutheil, the newspaper’s television critic, said that television executives were clinging to stars aged 50 to 80 in an attempt to capture an increasingly elderly audience.

French presenters are not only old but also predominantly male. Few women have joined their ranks, with the exception of Mireille Dumas, 51, and Claire Chazal, 49. Dumas presents a highbrow TV chat show and Chazal reads the news at weekends.

Michel Drucker, a 62-year-old chat-show host with a style reminiscent of Terry Wogan, said: “Our generation has never been in such demand. I’m going to carry on as long as I don’t need to use an earpiece or to read from a prompter.”

Drucker, who interviews celebrities and politicians on Sunday afternoons on France 2, is one of the clique of stars that controls television. Others include the TV journalists Charles Villeneuve, 63, Jean-Claude Narcy, 67, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, 57, and Jean-Pierre Pernaut, 54. Then there are the chat-show presenters Philippe Gildas, 69, Jean-Pierre Foucault, 57, Pascal Sevran, 59, Thierry Ardisson, 56, and Michel Denisot, 59.

Two of France’s most popular detective series also feature ageing actors. Pierre Mondy, who will be 80 next month, plays the main character in Les Cordier, Juge et Flic while Roger Hanin, who will be 80 in October, has a similar role in Navarro. Both regularly top the ratings with audiences of more than nine million.

Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, who has been presenting the evening news on TF1 since 1987, and Jean-Pierre Pernaut, who has been presenting the lunchtime version since 1988, consistently achieve better viewing figures than younger rivals on other channels. According to Drucker, only one young presenter has emerged to challenge les seniors. He is Marc-Olivier Fogiel, 35, who has a chat show on the France 3.

“Television channels are going to have to work with the grandad generation for a long time yet,” Le Monde said, adding that few were prepared to make room for new stars.

A similar trend is visible in other areas of French public life, such as politics. President Chirac is 72 and commentators see him standing for office again when his term ends in two years. The late François Mitterrand, his predecessor, was 79 when he left office.

Even some of France’s best-known pop stars are of pensionable age. Michel Sardou is 58, Johnny Hallyday is 61, Eddy Mitchell is 62 and Charles Aznavour is 80.

Robert Namias, head of news at TF1, says that the channel favours what he calls “people with a past”. And Jean-Pierre Cottet, the former head of programmes at France 5, says: “Television wants the most popular actors so that it can attract the biggest viewing figures. Automatically, the most popular actors are often those who have had the longest careers.”

However, Jean-Paul Tréguer, the head of La Senior Agency, a marketing firm that is aimed at the over-50s, said that television managers were still failing to keep pace with demographic change.

“There are 20 million people over the age of 50 in France and 13 million over the age of 60, and they don’t have the weight they should on television. There are still far too many young people on the small screen, proportionately,” he said.

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