For similar shows, BBC paid male host £3,000 & female £465

LONDON: For years, Samira Ahmed has presented a weekly, 15-minute programme on BBC television that allows viewers to question the broadcaster’s executives about its shows. She’s never been paid more than 465 pounds, or $598, per episode. During much of that time, Jeremy Vine presented another weekly, 15-minute program for the BBC that allows viewers to sound off about the network’s coverage. He was paid £3,000 for each episode.
On Monday, accompanied by other prominent BBC presenters and journalists, Ahmed went to court to sue the broadcaster over unequal pay. The BBC has long attracted criticism over disparities in the way it pays its staff, and Ahmed’s complaint comes just over a year after the BBC was forced to apologise to a senior journalist over pay disparities.
“On the back of my BBC ID card are written the BBC values, which include ‘we respect each other and celebrate our diversity,’ and ‘we take pride in delivering quality and value for money,’” Ahmed said in a statement. “I just ask why the BBC thinks I am worth only a sixth of the value of the work of a man doing a very similar job,” she said. Ahmed argued that both shows were similar — except in one respect: Her programme, “Newswatch,” has an audience of between 1.5 million and 2 million, while Vine’s programme, “Points of View,” attracts about 800,000.
In a statement, the BBC said that it was committed to equal pay and denied that gender was a factor in deciding Ahmed’s fee. It described Vine’s programme as “an entertainment programme with a long history and is a household name with the public.” “Newswatch — while an important program — isn’t,” the firm said. The BBC said that Ahmed was paid the same as her male predecessor when she started presenting “Newswatch,” and added that “News and entertainment are very different markets.”
Ahmed has previously sought, and won, backdated pay for her work on programmes for BBC radio, where male peers were being paid between 33% and 50% more than she was.
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References

1. ^{^} Samira Ahmed (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
2. ^{^} BBC (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
3. ^{^} viewers (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
4. ^{^} Jeremy Vine (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

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