Compared to what ?

The employment tribunal hearing, at Kingsway, Holborn, starting today, could have widespread implications for professional football, live theatre, classical music performances and more.

Samira Ahmed v The BBC is about equal pay for equal work. According to Samira's union, the NUJ, her case will focus on her contract to present Newswatch, a 15-minute show largely dealing with audience complaints about news coverage, which she has presented since 2012.

Samira, presumably guided by intelligent lawyers, says her equal pay comparator should be Jeremy Vine, in relation to his work on Points of View between 2008 and July 2018. He was paid £3,000 per episode, later reduced to £1,300 in January 2018. He left the programme in July 2018. By way of contrast, Samira Ahmed was paid £440 per Newswatch from 2012. Although this was increased in 2015 to £465 per programme, it was then reduced again when the BBC moved presenters onto employment contracts.

The problem is that Points of View is/was a BBC1 show. It's hard to get figures, but perhaps a typical edition could be Sunday 1st November 2015, when, at 4pm, the programme was watched by 1.31m, a 10.9% share of the available audience.  If you go back to September 2018 for Newswatch, in the week of September 24, the programme doesn't make the News Channel's Top 15 shows, meaning it was watched by fewer than 150,000.

1130 Update: The NUJ say the BBC1 audience for Newswatch is 1.5-1.9 million (that must be the overnight average of the Saturday edition of Breakfast, which repeats Newswatch). There are also another 100,000 Newswatch viewers on the News Channel. They say Points of View has 800,000.

So while equal work may have been involved, there wasn't equal exposure, and an equal requirement to attract an audience. Equal work may have been extended by the players in Southport FC's weekend 3-0 win over Bradford (Park Avenue), when compared with Manchester City's 3-0 win over Aston Villa. 54,000 paid to watch Manchester City. Fewer than 500 watched the game at Park Avenue. Lord knows what the differential in match payments really was.

I expect the BBC to call the previous presenter of Newswatch, Ray Snoddy, in evidence. An experienced freelance and more experienced media watcher, even he would never have expected a rate on the Vine scale.

For the record, the NUJ says Samira has won her argument in BBC Radio, using more credible comparators.  They gave her full backdated pay with male comparators for her work on Front Row on Radio 4 and Night Waves/ Free Thinking on Radio 3. On Front Row her male comparator was being paid 50 per cent more than her. On Night Waves her male comparator was being paid 33 per cent more.