Has the BBC misjudged the sense of outrage over Jonathan Ross's £18m talent deal?
In recent days criticism of exorbitant talent deals - and in particular Ross's big payday - has come from some unlikely corners: Radio 4 presenter Libby Purves, Jeremy Paxman's agent Anita Land, and Terry Wogan, of all people.
So will the backlash against the Ross deal force the BBC into a rethink on talent costs?
There is an irony here, in that the talent cost debate has been re-ignited by the publication of a collection of essays on TV talent by UKTV - Shooting Stars: a Collection of Essays, Musings and Rants on Talent and TV in the Noughties and Beyond - both Land and Wogan wrote pieces for it. And UKTV is the pay-TV operator, 50% owned by the BBC, which does very nicely, thank you, out of repeating shows made by the talent that the corporation forks out so much for.
The BBC seemed to have weathered the initial Ross row in June, trotting out its usual lines: we have to pay what we pay in order to keep top talent defecting to the competition, etc.
But now it has blown up in their faces again. And the BBC is most vulnerable over charges that it is splashing out on a few pampered presenters while slashing thousands of jobs as part of director general Mark Thompson's Value For Money cost saving drive.
Particularly when this line of attack is also linked to the bulging pay packets of Thompson and other senior BBC executives.
As Purves wrote in yesterday's Times: "when you do talk to the invisible heroes and heroines, programme-makers inside the BBC, you often find a sense of dismayed neglect and belittlement."
"Moreover, because of staff cuts, very little graduate recruitment is happening... a generation of makers is being lost as money goes on greedy old celebs."
This internal disillusionment is harder for Thompson to brush off - and potentially more damaging to the BBC - than all the external criticism.
But in the end it may be Gordon Brown who calls time on big money BBC talent deals.
The BBC's costings for its inflation-busting licence fee bid included an extra £1.4bn up to 2014 for "increase in base costs - superinflation in broadcast costs to be funded by future BBC self-help".
This superinflation will include projected talent cost inflation. But if, as looks increasingly likely, the BBC gets a less generous licence fee deal than it asked for from the government, maybe the resulting belt tightening will require a new thriftiness over talent deals.
