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Last night _ The Daily Mail _ broke the story that John Humphrys will be leaving the _ Today _ programme. The BBC has now announced that he has “ told programme bosses he intends to leave in

the autumn, but has not yet formally resigned”. He will apparently continue to present _ Mastermind, _ but judging by an emotional interview on _ The World at One _ on Wednesday, he won’t

be getting up at 3 am any more. It will be a huge loss to the BBC, but above all to the _ Today _ programme, Radio 4’s flagship morning news programme. Humphrys has been one of the

presenters for over thirty years, since 1987. The programme’s editor, Sarah Sands, calls him “Gandalf”: old and omniscient. This will be the third major loss to the programme in recent

years. First, Evan Davis, who left for _ Newsnight _ (and later _ PM _ ) in 2014. He was much younger and less experienced than Humphrys, but his knowledge of economics was a great loss to _

Today _ . Jim Naughtie, who was one of the main presenters from 1994 to 2015, left a year later. He is an experienced broadcaster with a broad cultural range, as much at home with

literature and classical music as politics. And now Humphrys. Humphrys is an excellent political interviewer, the best on the show, along with Nick Robinson. A real terrier. Perhaps his most

devastating interview was not political. It was his demolition job on the short-lived Director-General, George Entwistle, in 2o12. Not many major public figures have lost their job as a

result of a radio interview. Now 75, his retirement is hardly surprising. The timing, though, could not be worse for the BBC. The _ Today _ programme is still reeling, not only from losing

Evans and Naughtie, but from the appointment of Sarah Sands in 2017. She had no previous broadcasting experience and her arrival coincided with a sharp fall in ratings. It lost 800,000

listeners in her first year, from 7.66m a week during the second quarter of 2017 to 6.82m a week in April-June 2018. That first year was a time of vigorous political debate, here over Brexit

and in the US over Trump. Ratings for Radio 4’s most popular news programme should surely have been rising, not falling. Humphrys recently came under attack over the gender pay issue, which

shook the BBC. In 2017, it was claimed that he earned between £600,000 and £649,999 as a BBC presenter (he has also presented _ Mastermind _ since 2003). In January last year he took a

voluntary pay cut to £250-300,000, following the gender pay gap controversy. Why should a male presenter earn so much more than his female colleagues, critics demanded? There has been more

than an element of ageism in the attacks on Humphrys. He is one of the last great white male presenters of his era, along with Naughtie (now 67), David Dimbleby (80 when he retired as

presenter of _Question Time_), Jonathan Dimbleby (75 this summer and still presenting _Any Questions_), Jeremy Paxman (65 when he left _Newsnight _three years ago) and Andrew Neil (70 this

year and still going strong).    The problem, though, is how to replace Humphrys and, more important, how to replace this whole generation of superb TV and radio presenters. When Sarah

Montague left _Today _last year she simply swapped places with Martha Kearney from _The World at One_. When Eddie Mair left _PM_, Evan Davis moved over from _Newsnight_, where he still

hasn’t been properly replaced. Replacing Humphrys will be much harder. Replacing this whole generation of top presenters is almost inconceivable. This comes at a time when BBC News is not in

great shape and when presenters might be thinking of following Eddie Mair and Chris Evans out of the BBC (and Jeremy Vine now combines a Channel 5 daytime show with presenting his programme

on Radio 2) to earn more and receive less public scrutiny over their pay. The call, of course, is for more women and non-white presenters. This may seem straightforward to critics of the

old male dinosaurs. But Emma Barnett on Five Live and Sophy Ridge at Sky are the only new young star political presenters to have emerged in recent years. In 2013 a new study revealed that

just 18 per cent of presenters aged over 50 were women. While there are a number of top women presenters elsewhere at the BBC (Jenni Murray, Jane Garvey, Sarah Montague, Emily Maitlis, Fiona

Bruce, Kirsty Wark, Naga Munchetty and Victoria Derbyshire among them), they are already presenting leading programmes. There is an obvious problem with this list. Only Naga Munchetty is

not white. Other non-white women presenters who are not currently tied to a mainstream show include Zeinab Badawi, an excellent presenter at _ HARDtalk _ and before that at _ Channel 4 News

_ , and Samira Ahmed, from _ Front Row _ and _ Newswatch _ , who has worked as a reporter both on _ Today _ and _ Newsnight _ . News presenters and reporters include the superb newsreader,

Reeta Chakrabarti, Ritula Shah, from Radio 4’s _ The World Tonight, _ and the up-and-coming news reporter Leila Nathoo. You can see the problem. Radio 4 currently has fourteen news

presenters. Two are non-white and one, Mishal Husain, is already at the _Today _programme. Finding a new woman presenter to add to the _Today _team may be hard. Finding a much-needed

non-white presenter at _Today _or indeed to replace one of the other BBC presenters soon to retire will not be so easy. The BBC Executive Committee (one non-white member out of 15) will have

their work cut out for them.