Entertainment channel E! came under serious fire after it was revealed that popular show host Catt Sadler left the network after realising just how far the wage disparity was between herself and male co-host Jason Kennedy.
This was a point that was rather snidely pointed out by Will and Grace star Debra Messing who while on the red carpet for the Golden Globes made a remark about the wage disparity between the sexes while being interviewed by E!
Explaining the reason for the wage gap, Frances Berwick, president of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment said “Catt sadler and Jason Kennedy had different roles and different salaries,”
“Catt was in daytime and Jason handled prime evening news and red carpet… I hope that sets the record straight on that.” he added.
Berwick was also displeased with the media coverage of Sadler’s exit saying it purposely tried to put E! in a bad light, “I don’t think it’s been portrayed accurately,” she said. “They had different jobs, so yes, there’s a different pay scale for different jobs.”
Berwick said E! had hoped not to address Sadler’s comments, but in the light of Messing’s statement, needed to address it. “We don’t really like to get into the details about salaries and it felt like we didn’t need to do that,” she said. “Clearly what we’ve learned in the last 48 hours is we needed to be a little more upfront about it… I think this is the beauty and the challenge of social media is there’s a lot of information out there and there’s very little information out there. On the face of it this didn’t seem correct.”
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