Sir Michael Lyons thinks the public would be reassured if they were allowed to know roughly how much the BBC pays its stars and executives.
It’s that word everyone’s so fond of: “Transparency. “
Transparency alone is not enough. Knowing the extent of something disturbing is a good start, but it isn’t the answer to the public’s dissatisfaction.
We want reassurance that we’re getting value for money, not just that Graham Norton and Fiona Bruce are raking in vast paypackets “because they’re worth it.”
When Christine Bleakley dithered over her decision to join Adrian Chiles at ITV, her dilemma was presented as a matter of whether to follow the money or preserve her integrity by not being greedy, and staying with the superior BBC for a modest sum. Well, not exactly modest; but what do I know.
Her departure endorsed the market forces argument, which the BBC always uses to defend huge salaries, while their pre emptive sacking of Bleakley made them appear frugal and resolute. It gave them the opportunity to pose as unwilling participants in a bidding war, which was angled to make them appear concerned about spending our money. Maybe they hoped that wouldn’t undermine their their market forces argument; that if you wants talent you pays for it.
Maybe they thought that transparency over pay would allay the public’s disquiet over salaries. But I don’t think it would alleviate the confusion over what actually constitutes talent, and what constitutes greed, and what constitutes quality.
The BBC’s market forces argument is absurd. The commercial sector will provide all the trashy, ‘celeb’ driven TV the nation wants. There is no need for a government financed broadcaster to provide any at all. The BBC pays big wages to the stars of downmarket TV simply because it wants the work of manufacturing the stuff, not because the market wants or needs it to.
Miss Bleakley’s brand of dismal, dumbed down TV will still be available to the nation on ITV, so her departure form the BBC is no loss to the nation. The BBC will continue to produce as much rubbish as when she was on the payroll, hopefully with cheaper employees. It is too much to hope that the money saved by Miss Bleakley’s departure will be used to increase the tiny amount of quality product currently made by the BBC. It’ll probably be spent on taxis, 1st class train fares, expensive lunches, more overstaffing and the mega wages of the next nobody the BBC labels a star.
She was low paid compared with other presenters at the BBC – £100,000 p.a. compared to the £1m + of the likes of Chiles, Norton, Ross. They would have paid more to keep her, of course.
Whilst the bbc prefers to remain under the radar, they would rather run a two minute segment on Toady, where they can frame the debate as being merely one of ‘greedy celebrideees’, than the actual issues that concern the bbc’s many critics .
They are probably putting the entire staff through damage limitation training, at our expense, even now.
A classic from Farming Today, this morning. The bbc presenter had to be shown how to handle a ewe for the first time. How the f**k can you be the presenter of the dailly slot for farming and never have had experience of sheep ? Why does the bbc think this person can meaningfully contribute to a farming programme, just because they did some media studies course and had a pair of flowered wellies left over from ‘Glasto’.
What a BBC reporter not knowing anything about the subject they are reporting on? I am shocked =-O .
Science reporters with no knowledge of science, aircraft industry reporters with no knowledge of the industry, environment reporters with no experience of the environment. Business reporters with no experience in industry or commerce. Miltary/armed forces reporters with no knowledge of the armed forces and law and order reporters with no experience of police and law enforcement.
After all why do they need experience when cut and paste from allied political groups give them their copy anyway and BBC editors have angles and opinions worked out before hand?
The BBC: Never before have so many lazy and ignorant reporters known so little about so much and cared even less.
Well said, Cassie !
Backwoodsman,
I suspect the typical Beeboids’ experience of sheep is limited to certain activities.
I’m not interested in hearing any talk of being concerned about costs from a media organization which has two full television channels which have barely 3 hours of original programming per day and a news channel with more weather presenters and newsreaders appearing over four hours than my local cable news channel has on all day. How many millions are wasted on excess staff and equipment for this? Never mind the legion of compliance officers and middle management.
New reporters and “editors” ( whatever that means ) spring up every day. They must breed like rabbits at the BBC.
BBC STARS TO REVEAL WHAT THEY DO WITH THE MONEY
Bio,
I think you should have put a health warning on that link. It almost put me off my breakfast !
I dont care what the BBC pays for real talent. The problem is they give these contracts with “golden handcuffs” to people and then try to find a show for them.
Graham Norton was snapped up and they basically moved his C4 show to BBC. They then looked for other things for him to do.
He is a one-trick-pony. They paid so much they had to get more from him. The whole camp thing is rubbish, but they keep flogging that same dead horse.
Like him or loathe him, Jonathan Ross had a lot more strings to his bow. He has presented quite brilliant documentaries on BBC4 on areas he knows about. Far better value than Norton.
Bleakley is dire. Who cares if she goes? £900K per year for that, behave! Give me 24/7 Nigella Lawson 😛
The BBC just don’t get it – we are sick to death of being double-whammied. Not only at having left wing propaganda shoved down our throats and our culture smothered by multiculti nonsense, we’re forced to pay obscene amounts for the privilege.
Maybe the ConDems will develop the balls to tackle this – we live in hope.
BBC News Channel right now discussing horrible pay cuts and how poor stars might have to reveal their gargantuan salaries. Keeping salaries a secret is written into some contracts, says the female newsreader. She was just talking to previous BBC boss Sir Christopher Bland, who says it will all be fine in the end.
Then the Beeboid brought out the old canard that making those poor executives take only 11 months’ pay for 12 months work (which is a joke, as executives aren’t paid by the hour, FFS), will cause the BBC to lose top talent because they can make more money elsewhere. Bland said no, it’ll never happen, because the BBC is the best place to work. Classic.
Forget about cutting salaries, BBC. Merge channels 3 and 4, merge a couple of your pop music radio stations, get rid of the majority of your compliance officers, and cut your News 24 newsreader and weather presenter staff in half. I bet that’s around £300 million saved right there.
Simple solution. Let the drug taking rent boy raping twats fund themselves. Problem solved they can pay each other what they like, so long as I’m NOT funding the scum.
I bet the BBC is the “best place to work ” !
More mewling about BBC stars and top management salaries. This is a giant red herring, as far as I’m concerned. The waste is in the infrastructure, not in top salaries.
“That’s further evidence of the BBC recognising that this is a country facing tough times and that we need to do more to satisfy licence fee payers that we are genuinely using every pound and that we have particularly got to focus on the top pay of managers and the performers.” Michael Lyons
If you hate tuna sandwiches, being forced to pay for tuna sandwiches whatever the price or how many are in the pack, isn’t value for money or likely to satisfy.
I can’t stop laughing.
BBC 1 News “The glorious last Government has been praised for the way it handled the Swine Flu epidemic”
ITV News “The last Government has been heavily criticised for the way it negotiated the contact for Swine Flu drugs”
The truth is Liebour pissed away 1.2 billion pounds of worthless drugs that were never needed. But hey the BBC will always stick up for the Socialists pissing away our taxes.
In the cosy political triangle that is:
-the BBC – the BBC Trust – ‘the Guardian’:
“Sir Michael Lyons makes history by acknowledging the BBC is overfunded”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2010/jul/01/sir-michael-lyons-bbc-overfunded
Just saw that prat James Landale spouting yet more beeboid crap. A total non story where he claims that the coalition Government is in more trouble as he thinks that the referendum on changing the voting system (a Lib Dem idea) will be next May and that if they lose it HE can’t see any future for the coalition.
Wishful thinking twat boy, win or lose the Lib Dems are in for the long haul, but yet another example of the BBC mongs making up a total non story.
What I do love it that it does appear Toenails, Easton, Peston and Lansdale have been cut out of the loop, they don’t seem to be getting any more Downing street exclusives do they?