BBC pay

What an idiot.

And the women who work for the BBC in much more high profile and important roles than him, or his co-star Charlie, are not breadwinners, they're just working for pin money?

Pillock.

Oh are you married Tom?! I had no idea!
(Strictly Come Dancing viewers notoriously became more familiar with his nuptial arrangements than their own)

Actor Tom Chambers sticks his misogynistic oar into the debate:

www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/casualty-s-tom-chambers-slammed-for-defending-bbc-pay-gap-men-have-to-pay-for-their-wives-and-a3595506.html

Apparently many men have to be paid more to look after their family, therefore the BBC pay gap is justified. I have no words for how stupid this is.

It's more interesting that women don't feel like they're worth more - the agents do all the negotiations for the wages - and I think like the men feel like they can ask for millions in some cases. If every woman working for the BBC stopped working unless they all got paid equally then I'm sure it would happen.

How terribly convenient.

Ah, it's already happened. This from the Telegraph.

"The situation will become more opaque in the 2017/18 accounts because the corporation’s in-house production unit, BBC Studios, became an independent commercial entity at the beginning of this tax year".

No, because they aren't BBC salaries, which is what the scope of this release is.

So the salaries of presenters paid by production companies are not listed? Hmmm.

Given how many BBC programmes are produced by production companies, or "content companies", I'm surprised there are any direct salaries at all going to the talent.
Seriously, take a look at the end of the credits on many many programmes and it'll be produced by a company and sold to the BBC.
Including many popular radio shows.

Bake Off is a separate production company. Love Productions.

The BBC paid Love Productions for the show. And Love Productions pay the salaries of all involved.

I don't think the rules will allow that. Or did it apply to bake off salaries?

Unfortunately, I think a lot of the white blokes higher paid talent and the BBC bosses will now be colluding to form production companies and the like so that their BB salaries are reduced but they get massive remuneration in private.

The Hollywood public debate is interesting because some - brave -actors have actually spoken out.

Hasn't happened as much yet with stage actors or TV "talent" until this AFAIK.

Music is another interesting one: creators have legal copyright of course, which is perhaps good for equality as it applies to all, but wonder if male performers and backing band members who don't write their own songs are paid more than women too.

Yes, the word "talent" is interesting, isn't it? An attempt to insinuate that white men are more talented than their competitors and are therefore paid more on merit alone. So Huw Edwards is more 'talented' at reading an autocue than Fiona Bruce.

"Rewarding talent" seems to be code for ensuring that white men get offered the best gigs and the highest paid jobs.

Interesting that when James Purnell got his job as Director of Radio at the BBC there were no other candidates for that position. Now that really is talent when you can magic away other candidates.

Of course we don't know what competitor recruiters pay because they are under no obligation to release details. We can't therefore easily determine whether these people are paid over the "market rate". Seems likely given what we know about Hollywood stars like Jennifer Laurence that white, straight (or acting straight) male "talent" are paid much more.

Interesting parallels to private sector companies' strong resistance to sharing details about pay and gender and practice of threatening employees with dismissal for sharing salary/bonus info. They are easily able to hide the information that would make clear the inequality.

Well, Matt Baker was never a top gymnast either then.

But seems to be raking it in nonetheless.

I'd like to know who is responsible in the organisation for setting those salaries. I'm going to guess that there aren't a lot of BAME and women in that group of people.

nobody cares about gymnastics

Speak for yourself.

John Humphreys said, I think, that he'd accepted one or maybe two pay cuts recently. I don't know recently that was, but with there also being rumours that some women's pay had increased recently, it sounds like the disparity between male and female could have been a lot worse.

Also yes I heard who I think was James Purnell on PM yesterday. The referring to "Tony" all the time was like listening to an oilier, shitter W1A. Also yes apparently in an emergency where there's big, serious stuff to sort out, the BBC can't trust a woman to do it. Good to know.

gabby yorath was never a top gymnast .
11th in the commenwealth games for wales-frankly she is completely interchangeable-she seems to be doing very well-who else would hire her for that money?
nobody cares about gymnastics..
equally noone would know who kelly smith was ,even if she went around
with a sign on her head saying I am KELLY SMITH.
like it or not its the market..

Why wouldn't we 'get worked up' about the gender disparity? It's archaic. Really bad. This should be humiliating for the BBC.

The figures don't include the money Graham Norton gets from The Graham Norton Show apparently as he gets paid for this separately through his private production company so in reality he gets much much more.

I'm not surprised by Chris Evans - doesn't he have the highest listener numbers for a radio show in Europe?

It's the gender pay gap that I can't quite get my head round. I really like Vine, but not that much. Someone asked him on his show yesterday whether he was embarrassed by his salary and he totally avoided the question.

They are all over paid, except Graham Norton! Frankly the women must have crap agents.

I'm not sure that Graham vs Claudia is a fair comparison. You could replace her on SCD (it wouldn't be as good IMO but it would still work fine) but you could hardly replace him on the Graham Norton show - even if it wasn't for the name. But your other examples are bang on. Shearer and Lineker are examples of how the BBC is driven by inequalities in wider society. If you want to hire a retired male footballer with name recognition to comment on male football - which seems a reasonable idea - then you need to spend a lot of money to tempt them off the golf course. If you want to hire Kelly Smith to comment on the Lionesses' Euro run then she'll presumably do it for a very moderate amount because she has a mortgage to pay and isn't fighting off multi-million pound offers from Walker's Crisps. From the BBC's accountants' POV they're just doing their job, but it's perpetuating inequalities already built into the system.

nappyrat, was thinking the same thing. The data is almost meaningless, since many highly paid stars are paid by production companies, so not on these BBC lists.