BBC pay

[MrsTerryPratchett]

www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-40653383

The highest paid women earns a quarter of what the highest paid man earns and two thirds of the highest paid are men.

No surprises there.

It's appalling and yes, there is a gender pay gap but I honestly can't get too worked up about it when they're all on such ridiculous sums and it just underlines how unequal our society is.

But the BBC is publicly funded and should be an example to other companies so it does matter. Also if they are paying like that for presenters what are they paying for the cleaners, secretaries etc?

Well one benefit of this is that when MRAs start banging on about how there is no gender pay gap they won't have a hairy leg to stand on.

Silver lining and all that

I'm having this discussion on a forum dedicated to my male-dominated hobby.

Apparently there is no gender disparity- women are getting paid what a presenter should and the men at the top are grossly overpaid.

No eye roll big enough, Fairfax.

I tend to agree that the men's pay should be reduced to that of the women's in this situation though.

I agree Fairfax the men are grossly overpaid. The interesting comparison is to ITV/Channel 4 BBC white male presenters pay (and presumably throughout the corporation) is in excess of free market norms and is an abuse of public funds as well as evidence of endemic racism and sexism.

I agree that they are overpaid. Doesn't mean there isn't a disparity though - you can see it even in the lower pays.

Stephen Nolan, overpaid yes but a pp mentioned a niche role, he actuslly works 3 jobs over 7 days, he does a 5 day a week radio show on radio ulster (with the highest ratings in the country) and a weekly TV show here too.

disgrace..
its all there in black and white and no way to deny it..
however,in the case of shearer and lineker they are basically being paid shedloads for the credibility for previously being top footballers.
you cant say this about the woman presenters.

how any of these people male or female can be getting the amount of money they are all getting is beyond me though.eddie mair 300k???!wtf?

however,in the case of shearer and lineker they are basically being paid shedloads for the credibility for previously being top footballers. you cant say this about the woman presenters.

Gabby Logan is doing a pretty good job on MOTD2. And wasn't she a top gymnast in her day?

I don't buy the excuse of "its a market, and the men, by coincidence, have a higher market value". Why? Because the market is sexist, perpetuated by the BBC (and others) paying ludicrous amounts to men, and not women. I mean, Nick Knowles? WTF?

And did anyone hear the Eddie Mair interview with one of the BBC head honchos yesterday justifying why he was given, handed, the top job that no women were able to interview for? Pillock.

'I did like a snippet I heard on Radio 4 driving home, "So why does having a penis mean you are paid more?"'

My DP heard this too. It was Eddie Mair, BBC 4 presenter and Tormentor-in-Chief of Boris Johnson he's ace.

Sorry, Radio 4, not BBC 4

We can draw some very clear lines of comparison from this list - Graham Norton & Claudia Winkleman both do big prime time shows, a radio 2 show and side projects but he gets over 3 times what she does, Gary Lineker and Clare Balding, Alan Shearer and Gabby Logan, Jeremy Vine and anyone from women's hour.
Matt Baker/Alex Jones seems ok ish seeing as he does more shows. Emily Maitlis should tell the beeb to fuck right off.

Sorry if this has already been said, but the figures don't show the full picture at all!!

Everyone knew this info would be published & they've all got much savvier about how they get paid - all through Indy production companies etc.

The figures look bad, sure. But the reality is far far worse I expect.

I've emailed the CEO of the Beeb to tell him my shock & ask what the BBC is doing & cc'ed big cheeses (ironically, female!!) from the Dept of C,M & sport.

Do the same!!

sashh yes, some very interesting journalism now would be to find out the rates of pay of cleaners at the bbc for men and women (and proportion of each doing this job relative to the proportion of each at the top). Expect it is all contracted out but I still think the difference between the pay at the top and the bottom (would be interesting).

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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..

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.

nobody cares about gymnastics

Speak for yourself.

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.

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.

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.