Have you heard how much the BBC is paying Zoe Ball? According to the annual report of its highest earners, it’s the best part of a million quid – between £980,000 and £984,999 to be exact – and some people are quite angry.
Despite this being a slight drop on her earnings for the previous year, the cries of derision and disbelief are all over social media today. She is the second-highest earner at the corporation, surpassed only by Gary Lineker who takes home around £1.3m each year, to the fulminating rage of hardly anyone at all. It’s Ball they’ve got the knives out for.
Ball’s critics declare her “talentless” and “not worth the money”, one comparing her pay packet to the mere £167k salary taken home by the current British Prime Minister. And what does she do for this pile of gold? Present radio. It’s not even TV! Some even complained that she took time off this year while her mother was terminally ill and subsequently died. And now she’s got Covid. What a liberty.
Taking into account the fact that we don’t live in a society where the people who do the hardest, ghastliest jobs get paid the most, what is it these detractors want from Ball specifically? Is there an amount that would satisfy them? Less than the prime minister but more than, say, a loss adjustor?
Ball is the voice and face of the BBC’s most successful radio station. Approximately 6.5 million listeners tune into her weekday breakfast show on Radio 2, which she has presented since 2019, beating her nearest rival Greg James at Radio 1 by 2.1 million people. Her nearest commercial rivals at Heart can only muster 3.9 million listeners weekly. It’s the biggest radio job in the UK. That should surely attract a prize pay packet.
After her predecessor Chris Evans left for Virgin, BBC radio has steadily lost or pruned big names to the benefit of its commercial rivals. Major departures have included Ken Bruce, Vanessa Feltz, Jordan North and, before his death, Paul O’Grady. Talent appearing on those commercial broadcasters don’t have to tell us what they earn, but Ball’s salary is a good indication of what the BBC are trying to compete with. If they want the best presenters, they need to offer attractive remuneration. That’s the marketplace they’re operating in.
Radio presenting can sound deceptively easy if it’s done well. And Ball makes it look incredibly easy. We don’t notice the expertise involved, especially when it’s deployed on a light entertainment format. Perhaps you watch the news or Match of the Day and recognise the skill on display. Maybe you don’t think you could recall all of those facts on demand while presenting live TV and a stream of instructions are funnelled into your brain via an earpiece. But perhaps you do think you could do what Ball does?
A lot of people “reckon” they could sit at a microphone and blather for a few hours because their friends say they’re funny down the pub and anyway, how hard can it be to chat to a couple of guests while someone else plays the records?
But, as with so many jobs in show business, there’s more to it than meets the eye. After three decades, Ball is a total pro. Her breezy chat and funny digressions are a great disguise for the fact that she’s in complete control of what’s happening on air, always 10 steps ahead while reacting to what’s happening in the moment. And it always sounds like she is talking only to you.
It takes a lot of work and experience to sound like she’s just popped in for a cup of tea and a gossip. She is the first woman to host both the Radio 1 and Radio 2 breakfast shows for a reason and it now seems more appropriate than ever that she began her first Radio 2 show with Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”, because some is definitely due. We so rarely have this conversation about pay when it comes to a male broadcaster.
But as broadcasters like Ball, Claudia Winkleman, Lauren Laverne and so many more BBC names prove, you don’t have to be pushing your glasses up the bridge of your nose and holding politicians to account to be considered to be at the very top of your game.