Mike Hosking: Some uncomfortable truths about broadcasters

Samira Ahmed took a case to an employment tribunal over her pay and won. Photo / AP

COMMENT:

I hadn't heard of Samira Ahmed, but she had a good win last week in Britain.

She works for the BBC and took a case against them over her pay and the fact she is a female.

She won.

The bill is still to be sorted out, but you would loosely call it a "landmark" case, and presumably it will lead to many other cases of aggrieved females looking for an easy pay rise in front of an employment tribunal who have made an egregious and potentially very dangerous mistake.

Ahmed, pitted herself against Jeremy Vine, a vastly better broadcaster, in this broadcaster's opinion, and one that was paid significantly more than her.

The BBC defended Vine's wages, saying he was cheeky and had a "glint in his eye".

Which is a clumsy way of saying he is better at his job because he offers a wider and more appealing personality and talent base.

The tribunal disagreed, and among a number of other ignorant and superficial offerings, suggested they had trouble understanding what the BBC had meant by "glint in the eye."

And basically they both read an autocue and anyone could do it.

For those of you who haven't read an autocue, anyone can't do it. I have seen in my 38 years in the industry a lot of people who can't do it, and many of them unfortunately have actually been employed to do so.

So by the time you get to those who aren't employed to do so, it becomes very clear, very quickly, reading an autocue well, requires no inconsiderable amount of skill.

But in making the statement, the tribunal displays a dangerous lack of understanding in the very matters they are passing judgment on.

How you decide a person's income when you clearly have no understanding of the skills required should alarm anyone who has to employ people and write a cheque for the work.

Further danger comes in the form of the precedent set.

Jobs aren't handed out based on gender. Well they are more and more sadly, because we have gone nuts. But they shouldn't be, and this is where we are entering troubled and expensive waters.

I looked Ahmed up and watched her work.

She is what I would call a solid professional, a safe pair of hands.

She is like many in the industry; she does her job well, but unspectacularly.

You wouldn't switch off because of her, but you certainly wouldn't diarise an appearance. In other words, I doubt she draws a crowd.

Presenter Jeremy Clarkson is a real talent, says Mike Hosking. Photo / File

The BBC's most recent example of why talent, and that's what we are talking about here - TALENT not gender - is paid significantly more than others is Jeremy Clarkson.

Clarkson is a genuine broadcasting genius, and when you paired him with James May and Richard Hammond on Top Gear you had a combination rarely seen and virtually impossible to manufacture.

Clarkson of course got sacked and the other two went with him. The BBC has tried ever since a growing number of replacements from Chris Evans to Matt Le Blanc to Freddy Flintoff but to no real avail. The crowd and the audience left the building with the originals and have not returned.

And that in a nutshell is what broadcasting is all about - bums on seats. You put a show on to attract the biggest audience you can, and for that you need talent in front of the camera that people like, connect with, get, go out of their way to watch.

It's a gift, and very few have it, and you certainly don't get it just by being female.

You can of course have it as a female, but it's not a birthright and this is where the tribunal and all those who back the wacky view of the world that's tipping the tried and true way of working out wages on its head - either don't see or in my suspicion, don't want to see.

Ahmed didn't get paid as much as Vine not because she's a woman, but because she simply isn't as good as Vine, and by winning she does women a massive disservice given most of them would still, I assume, like to be judged on their talent not their chromosomal makeup.