The price of talent

They were gathered in a tent in Montpelier Gardens, Cheltenham on Sunday morning, paying £12 a head to hear Today presenters Justin Webb and Nick Robinson being grilled by Telegraph radio critic Gillian Reynolds. Also on stage, at this Times and Sunday Times event, additionally sponsored by investment managers Baillie Gifford, was Today Senior Producer Purvee Pattni.

Senior producer pay at the BBC is, on average, around £49k. Nick Robinson's BBC earnings are between £250,000 and £299,999. Justin Webb's BBC earnings are between £150,000 and £159,999.

Nick tried to explain the Robinson/Webb differential "There are other factors, largely because I was recruited from ITV where I was on a much higher salary than my BBC colleagues."

Good heavens. Nick says he got his first six-figure pay deal when he went for breakfast with the head of ITV News in 2002, to be offered the job of political editor. He returned as BBC Political Editor in 2005, when Helen Boaden was Director of News and Roger Mosey, a long-time champion of Robinson, was running TV News. He succeeded Andrew Marr - who is still on a BBC deal worth more than £400k - Marr was appointed in 2000 by Tony Hall when he was Director of News. 

Clearly Nick was able to negotiate an improvement to come back from ITV to Auntie as Political Editor - but should he have retained so much of it when moving to Today, a job many people would like to do, at the cost of internal differentials ?  This appointment to Radio 4, so long in Nick's stars, was made under Director of News James Harding; many presenter salaries in News have been set by his aide-de-camp, Keith Blackmore.