When Zoe Ball confessed she was quitting her lucrative job hosting Radio 2’s breakfast show to do the school run, she won plaudits from fans who praised her for being so ‘real’.
Sharing the news with her listeners last Tuesday morning, she said: ‘After six incredible years on the Radio 2 breakfast show, it’s time for me to step away from the very early mornings and focus on family.’
As well as releasing a statement, in which she said she was ‘excited to embrace’ her next chapter by ‘being a mum’ in the mornings, there were also reports that the death of her mother, Julia, from pancreatic cancer in April had hastened her departure from one of the most high-profile presenting jobs in radio.
Behind the scenes at the BBC, however, the announcement has only deepened a grumbling resentment among staffers, not least over money.
As one of the corporation’s top earners, Ball, 53, is sacrificing a £950,000-a-year job, which will please those critical of the lavish sums paid to stars at the licence fee-payers’ expense. But she is hardly coming off the BBC payroll. She is widely expected to remain on a hefty – albeit reduced – salary, despite taking on a watered-down role elsewhere at the station.
It is a source of much irritation that this appears to be yet another example of the corporation ‘pandering’ to the whims of its stars. After all, critics point out, Ball hardly attracted more listeners to the show: after she took over the reins from Chris Evans in January 2019, the breakfast show’s audience fell by two million.
Zoe Ball is leaving the breakfast show on BBC Radio 2 after six years
‘It all feels like smoke and mirrors,’ said one BBC insider. ‘Zoe is loved by the upper echelons and the job is demanding – five days getting up at the crack of dawn is hard.
‘But the truth is that she will be handed a plum new show for which she will be paid hundreds of thousands of pounds, despite her listening figures dropping massively.’
The issues over pay at the corporation, of course, extend beyond Zoe Ball. It is no coincidence, sources say, that just two weeks ago, Match Of The Day’s Gary Lineker – the BBC’s highest paid presenter – announced he would leave the flagship football programme after more than 25 years at the helm.
That role netted the former England striker £1.35 million a year. But, like Ball, he is set to continue receiving bumper pay packets after the corporation signed a new one-year licensing deal to host two podcasts made by his production company, Goalhanger.
One, The Rest Is Football, is fronted by Lineker and fellow former players Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, and will release weekly episodes from this week. The other, The Rest Is History, presented by historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, will also be available after a successful trial.
Moves such as these are convenient for the broadcaster, my source says, because it appears as if managers are cracking down on the big salaries while in reality it keeps their biggest names happy and saves little money overall.
The insider says: ‘Zoe and Gary are paid significantly more than their colleagues and they both left their jobs within a fortnight of one another. What does that say to you? There is much talk around the BBC that they wanted a way to get the big salaries off the ‘highest paid’ list but, clearly, for some reason, they want to keep these people happy. It feels like the corporation is being taken for a ride.
‘Gary caused his bosses a huge headache with his outspoken political views, while Zoe disappeared for weeks in the summer and wouldn’t tell her listeners where she was.’
It was Scott Mills, who has an afternoon show on Radio 2, who covered for Ball when she spent six weeks off air, without explanation, earlier this year. He is now set to inherit the breakfast crown permanently – and is widely expected to get a healthy pay rise.
Currently, he earns between £315,000 and £319,999, and there were reports last week that he could see that rise to £450,000.
Gary Lineker announced he would quit as host of Match of the Day two weeks ago
I’m told that nervous bosses may well want to raise that sum, mindful that the gender pay gap can work both ways. If Mills’s pay rockets, any ‘savings’ made by reducing Ball’s salary won’t make a great difference to licence fee-payers.
‘It’s all about the optics,’ says a BBC source. ‘It’s about wanting the licence fee-payer to think that costs are being cut when actually they are not really. Once you add up all the new salaries, there won’t be much difference. But what you won’t get is a huge salary on the list of high earners any more. It is so bizarre that the BBC just keep pandering to these stars.’
Other high-profile names still on the payroll, despite stepping back, include former Today programme presenter James Naughtie. The journalist retired from his Radio 4 duties in 2016, yet still earned between £150,000 and £199,999 during the following year as a BBC contributor. In 2018/19, he took home a further sum between £170,000 and £174,999.
Kirsty Wark, the long-serving Newsnight host, left the role in July only to be unveiled as a member of Radio 4’s Front Row team for the Edinburgh Festival. Veteran foreign correspondent John Simpson has, since 2022, taken on a less onerous role presenting the politics show Unspun World.
A special ire is reserved for how the Corporation indulged disgraced newsreader Huw Edwards. He was handed a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after he admitted charges of making indecent images of children. The corporation continued to pay his salary (the third highest on its books) after he was arrested last November – £200,000 of which he has been ordered to pay back.
As for Ball, it is widely expected that she may host a weekend show at a far more sociable hour.
‘Whatever it is, it will be pretty cushty,’ said a source. ‘Imagine being able to lose loads of listeners and take weeks off without telling the licence fee-payers why, then get a lovely prize of a show at the end.’ Nice work if you can get it.