[Jack_]

Evans was on £2.2m at its peak, and when Zoe took over there was a lot of discussion about how her salary would compare to his. Honestly, I think if she’d been on anything less than a million there’d have just as equally been a lot of complaints about the gender pay gap again. If you pay someone a salary of that magnitude in the first place, you kind of set a precedent going forward unfortunately. And I think that’s fair enough tbh (I don’t care for either of them, btw)

There’s a bigger factor at play here though. As fascinating as these yearly lists may be, they are only duty bound to report them because the government has been hellbent on increasing the “this is tax payers money!!!” sentiment. If they remained private, would any of these discussions even be happening? Would the agents of BBC talent be comparing like for like with people’s predecessors or colleagues when negotiating fees? There’s a certain irony in that these lists, if anything, are actually compounding the “problem” people have with the amount of money being paid out