Night of the long knives at Radio 2
Old (male) favourites axed to make way for ladettes as BBC battles sexism claims
‘Committed to featuring women’
BOSSES at BBC Radio 2 have cleared out veteran male DJs and replaced them with women as the Corporation desperately tries to battle sexism claims.
Jo Whiley, Sara Cox and Cerys Matthews, who rose to fame in the ‘ladette’ era of the 90s, have been handed new shows on the station as part of the shake-up.
Miss Whiley, 52, will become the first female DJ on the station’s weekday daytime schedule for 20 years in May. The last was Debbie Thrower, presenting the station’s afternoon show between 1995 and 1998.
She will co-host a new drive-time show with Simon Mayo, who previously had the slot to himself.
Cerys Matthews, 48, will take over the Blues Show, and Sara Cox, 43, will swap her existing Sound of the 80s show for four 10pm shows each week. Gary Davies will take over Miss Cox’s previous slot.
Miss Whiley and Miss Cox were Radio 1 DJs, while Miss Matthews is the former lead singer of nineties pop group Catatonia.
However, their promotions this spring will come at the expense of long-standing male presenters.
Blues Show host Paul Jones, 75, the former Manfred Mann frontman, is leaving the station after more than 30 years. Nigel Ogden, 63, and Frank Renton, 78, are also out, after bosses axed their respective shows.
Ogden’s The Organist Entertains had been running for 50 years, and he had spent 38 years as its host.
Station chiefs also axed Jonathan Ross’s Arts Show, but insisted yesterday that they are discussing future opportunities with him. According BBC figures, Mayo is paid between £350,000-£399,999, while Miss Whiley receives £ 150,000£199,999. They will receive equal pay for their upcoming show, but there will still be a disparity in their overall salaries as they present other projects for the BBC.
The shake-up comes as the BBC faces unprecedented pressure to tackle its shocking gender pay gap. Radio 2 was slammed for paying huge sums to men when the BBC was forced to publish salaries of its 96 highest-paid stars last summer.
Its DJs accounted for four of the Corporation’s seven biggest earners – Chris Evans on £2.2million, Graham Norton on up to £900,000, Jeremy Vine on up to £750,000 and Steve Wright on up to £550,000.
Its all-male lineup sparked criticism from Women’s Hour host Jane Garvey, who said the station was ‘extraordinarily male, entirely pale and [with] big salaries.’
Astonishingly, Radio 2 boss Lewis Carnie later claimed that the station was not a part of the BBC’s gender pay problem. He told the London Evening Standard: ‘On a per-show basis, the pay gap doesn’t exist.
‘We wouldn’t care what anybody is – gender, sexuality or ethnic origin ... What’s important is the talent, and they’re paid according to that.’
He did not mention that women had only been allowed onto the fringes of the weekday schedule.
Radio 2 finally appeared to address this yesterday after BBC boss Lord Hall issued an edict that the broadcaster must close its gender pay gap altogether by 2020.
A spokesman said the BBC ‘is committed to featuring more women across our output’ and achieving the 2020 pledge, giving Miss Whiley’s new role as an example.
It comes as Corporation staff reel from the shock resignation by Carrie Gracie, who quit as China editor on Sunday in protest against the ‘secretive and illegal’ way that the it handles pay for men and women.