The BBC’s Jane Hill has come out on top in Up To Speed’s own popularity poll of British female newsreaders, with 18% of our blog’s readers voting her the best presenter.

BBC's Jane Hill Voted Your Favourite Female Newsreader

We started the poll when BBC bosses were being accused of ageism by female newsreaders who felt they were dropped sooner than their male counterparts.
The results of the poll show our readers aren’t necessarily most impressed by the most highly paid or prominent women who read the news.

Hot on Jane’s heels was Susanna Reid, of BBC Breakfast, with 16% of the vote.

Katie Derham of ITV News came third with 9%.

In fourth place was Fiona Bruce, who is perhaps Britain’s most high profile news and programme presenter. Fiona received 7% of the votes cast by readers of the Up To Speed blog.

Two of Susanna Reid’s co-presenters on Breakfast, Kate Silverton and Sian Williams share 5= with 6% of the votes each.

Coming up just behind them in seventh place is another face from  the BBC and one of Jane Hill’s colleagues on rolling news, Joanna Gosling.

No fewer than five female anchors share the next slot with 4% of the vote each. So, in equal 8th place we have Mary Nightingale of ITV along with her colleague Nina Hossain, up against Natsaha Kaplinsky of Five and two more BBC presenters Mishal Hosain and Dani Sinha.

Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis is holding her own against a brace of GMTV stars – Kate Garraway and Emma Crosby – for fourteenth equal place in the poll.

Kirsty Wark of Newsnight, ITV’s Julie Etchingham and Charlotte Hawkins of Sky each received 1% of the vote and shared 17th place.

A BBC newsreader has announced she is leaving Britain for China, because she feels there is a “culture of ageism” at the corporation, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Susan Osman, 51, has worked on the BBC News Channel, BBC World and on Points West, the regional news programme for the south-west.

Her decision comes two months after reports that the BBC was actively seeking to recruit a female presenter over the age of 50.

Earlier this year, Up To Speed gave details of the university backgrounds of many of the women who front the news as evidence that female British newsreaders certanly don’t deserve to be dismissed as so-called “auto-cuties”.

Today we’ve added to that research by giving the ages of 20 of the most successful female newsreaders. The average age is just over 40.  The authority, gravitas and appeal of newsreaders can have an important impact on the ratings used to judge the success of the programmes they present. And so, we thought it would also thought it would be interesting to run a poll of the twenty people on our list to see who you think is Britain’s Best Female Newsreader.