On 20 June 1960, she became the first female newsreader at the BBC, although
Barbara Mandell had been reading the news on ITV since 1955. The BBC "experiment" of using a female newsreader just for the late-night news was short-lived: by October 1960, BBC research had shown that viewers deemed a woman reading the late news was "not acceptable". Women did not read the news on BBC again until
Angela Rippon joined the Nine O'Clock News team in 1975.
