BBC 'Talent' pay revealed

But in that whole field everything's insane - it's like Tulipmania, the madness of crowds. I presume there's some cartel of agents who rake off huge fees ramping this whole thing up in an incredibly risk averse atmosphere that rarely seems to want to bring on board new people (it seems to be the same in other fields - look at books, where it's increasingly going the celebrity-turned-author or reboot/prequel/sequel route).

I was once paid £60 by Woman's Hour to talk about a thinkpiece I'd written - it was £60 more than I'd been paid for the original article, so I was rather pleased!

The rules were quite clear. Portable TVs were only covered under their home license if they had internal power (i.e. batteries) and a portable aerial, and they were only in use outside of the household for a set period of time. University term times were over that period. We were certainly told that in our information packs before we left for university in our first term. Of course there were people who still ignored the information and just assumed they wouldn't get a visit from the TV license people, or if they did, hid. I recall returning to halls of residence one time to see people running upstairs carrying their portable TVs, and knew the TV license people had come to call!

I've always been happy to pay the TV license - we get astonishing value from the BBC! I pay almost as much a month for various other TV products, like Netflix/Now TV, and I don't get nearly as much use out of them. I'm even listening to BBC radio/podcasts and reading the BBC website here in the US.

As predicted, a lot of the discussion about salaries is annoying. Yes, there is a gender gap, and that gap is because of the difficulty women have reaching the levels of seniority and getting the opportunities that their male colleagues can. Particularly as higher pay comes with longevity, and longevity is harder for achieve for women because older women get replaced by younger ones.

Comparing Chris Evans' pay to Claudia Winkleman's isn't a terribly useful measure, because they are doing vastly different jobs - the actual work doesn't compare like-for-like and certainly the media personality aspect of it all means that Chris Evans is in higher demand among competitors, and so can command a higher salary.
We need to work on the opportunities for women, we need to change the cultural view about women, so that women are in the same position as their make colleagues to command higher pay.

Must be a generational thing! We had to swear an oath not to kindle fire or flame in the library but there was nothing about those newfangled television sets. One of my tutors had never actually set eyes on a video machine.


And the principle that an unwaged teenaged student needed a second licence for a set that was out of the family home for 24 weeks of the year was ridiculous.

If the school had severe financial problems I'm surprised they could afford 26 taxis - couldn't they send them all home on the one school bus? ;-)

Parsley, you are truly oblivious to how life is for most people aren't you? Are you a Tory cabinet minister by any chance?

Quite frankly I find these salaries obscene, given that the BBC is a public body and how hard life is for so many people, people who are legally obliged to pay a licence fee. Nobody needs to earn those amounts of money at all.

Late 20th century.

I'm really surprised to hear that Gary Barlow is only earning £250,000 a year for his BBC work. I mean after tax that's just under... £250,000 a year.

Probably just over £250,000 a year when you factor in any expenses loopholes hes found

Live in the U.S. and you soon be very glad of the T.V. License.

Re BIB, I'm not really sure we are... you could say the same of anything we pay for. Does paying for a meal in a restaurant entitle us to know the chef's wages, or the owner of the restaurant, or the Chief Exec of the hotel chain it's part of? The law requires disclosure of data that will highlight gender gap (numbers of people of each gender in each pay band), but not the naming of names. I too find it murky.

Also, as many have already said, this disclosure is only half (if that) of the BBC story and made in isolation. With no comparable disclosures from the commercial sector, and a lack of like for like comparability within the data that HAS been disclosed, it is pretty meaningless. Yes, there's some big numbers in there, but there are in every industry/sector - big doesn't automatically equal overpaid.


We live in a market economy. Does anyone think that the ensemble in a show should all earn the same as the leads? That all leads should be paid the same, regardless of experience, talent, box office draw, size of production, venue, etc? Why is this any different? The Beeb pays less than the commercial sector, but if we demand high quality programming from it, they must do what they can to secure and retain talent.

What does concern me is the gender and ethnicity pay gaps and they clearly have some work to do there. But again, they are hardly unique in that.

I confess I'm in something of a grump today for reasons totally disconnected with this subject, but I'm really getting quite hacked off with all the indignant shouts of "how much?"

I'll shut up now - and lynette, none of the above is aimed at you, you just inadvertently lit the blue touch paper ;-)

For those trying to claim that the BBC should be unique in doing this because 'public money', where do you think ITV, Sky etc get their funds from? Subscriptions from....the public. Advertisers who make their money from......the public. Etc. Every single product and service is, in the end, paid for by public money, or maybe the complainers actually do think there is a magic money tree.