Zoe’s £1m pay rise (after losing 1m listeners)
Radio 2 star is set to be Beeb’s top earner on £1.36m ... as 1m listeners switch her off
Great TV licence turn-off: Pages 14&15
ZOE Ball is set to dethrone Gary Lineker as the BBC’s best-paid star, according to figures released yesterday.
The 49-year-old Radio 2 presenter’s £1million pay hike takes her earnings to an astonishing £1.36million.
That should see her outstrip Match of the Day host Lineker, 59, who has agreed to give up £400,000 of his £1.75million package as part of a fiveyear deal announced yesterday.
Miss Ball’s huge rise comes despite her breakfast show losing a million listeners. She is one of a number of high-profile women to enjoy bumper BBC pay rises, with four female stars among the top ten earners for the first time.
Fiona Bruce, Vanessa Feltz, Lauren Laverne, Emily Maitlis, Laura Kuenssberg, Sara Cox and Tina Daheley have all had big increases amid huge cost pressures on the corporation.
More than half of the highest earners were given rises while only 19.7 per cent suffered cuts.
The overall figure for talent pay rose £1.1million to £144.6million, with 76 stars on more than the Prime Minister’s salary of £150,000.
The corporation is paying out the large sums when it also has to find £125million savings in the face of the pandemic. The axe is expected to fall on thousands of jobs, many of them in news. There was also criticism about the lack of diversity in the top ten because all of the stars were white.
Miss Ball’s pay surged because she did many more editions of her radio show than she had the year before.
Defending her salary, new BBC director-general Tim Davie said: ‘Zoe is absolutely a broadcaster at the top of her game. She’s delivering over eight million listeners.’
Of Radio 2, he added: ‘We’re getting incredible value.’
Miss Bruce, whose pay surged by 75 per cent to up to £454,999, was one of the four women in the top ten. This is thought to reflect her first full year of working on Question Time.
Miss Laverne, with a full 12 months as presenter of Desert Island Discs on Radio 4, entered the top ten with a pay hike of £90,000 to £399,999.
The other woman in the top ten was Radio 2 and Radio London presenter Miss Feltz. Her pay rose from £359,999 to £409,999.
Miss Maitlis received a massive increase of more than 40 per cent, giving her £374,999 a year.
Points of View host Miss Daheley saw her pay jump from £189,999 to up to £259,999. Graham Norton, third overall, saw his pay go up by around £115,000 to £729,000, Radio 5 Live presenter Stephen Nolan entered the top ten as his pay shot up to £394,999 and Radio 1’s Scott Mills saw his pay increase from £289,999 to £349,999.
Radio 2’s Ken Bruce earned in the region of £100,000 more than the previous year, putting him on £389,999. But some other stars were not so lucky. Huw Edwards, Alan Shearer, Andrew Marr and Nicky Campbell all had their pay cut. Shearer’s salary dropped from £444,999 to £394,999.
Julian Knight, Tory chairman of the Commons media committee, said the figures were worrying.
He added: ‘Despite Gary Lineker’s pay cut, when millions of pensioners are having to find extra cash to pay for the BBC and services they depend on, it’s concerning to see not only has the bill for on-air talent grown by more than £1million but that more than 100 senior executives are paid over £150,000 a year – in many cases considerably more than that.’
Mr Davie admitted there was work to do after the lack of diversity was pointed out to him. But he said 18 per cent of all stars earning more than £150,000 were from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds.
When asked about star pay he insisted such talent ‘came to the BBC at a significant discount to what they’d get in the open market’.
But the director general added: ‘We will invest in very limited situations in particular markets to ensure we have got the best talent. There will be some particular instances where we have exceptional talent where we make those investments.’