Huw Edwards earns up to £599,999 a year; Fiona Bruce is in the £399,999 bracket. You can call that profound gender imbalance. You can also wonder about the rates of pay that BBC “talent” attract. But there is, at least, a broad competitive argument deployed here. Stars bring viewers and listeners. Stars have a market value.

But now scratch your head over the latest pay report commissioned from PwC. It gives 700 World Service “off-air” staff – producers, researchers – as well as the monitoring teams that read and report on media coverage around the globe, an average of 8% more to bring them into line with BBC domestic news. Presenters and reporters who work on-air will be considered for rises under a separate, BBC-wide enquiry.

What’s already odd, though, is the mixture of apples and pears. Those media monitors sell their bulletins to HMG and commercial concerns wanting information. It’s a transaction business.

Producers and editors on the News at Ten have a market value, too. See how they move to ITV or Sky – or even 10 Downing Street. Producers of services in, say, Nepali, Sinhalese and Tamil don’t have that chance. The integrated scales suggested by PwC make no sense – unless the convenient vision of one giant, integrated BBC newsroom becomes reality. But don’t hold your breath.

There is really only one solid argument to go along the present path, an argument that isn’t exactly standard PwC fodder. “I sit next to the World Service and am enchanted by their modesty and wish to bring information from round the world to listeners,” the new editor of Today, Sarah Sands, tells me. No complex categories or catch-up conundrums. Just plain public service.