BBC Salaries Published (and general rants about the licence fee)

[DJ Barry Hammond]

 

I'll go and find the link to the full list in a moment - but whilst I do that, please continue the rage at the headline numbers published by the BBC's direct competition!

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/howwework/reports/ara

 

Full report (above)

 

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethebbc/reports/pdf/annex_annual_report_201617.pdf

 

Annex detailing salaries (above)

[LestaAl]

let me start things off......

 

Commercial radio and TV stations will be laughing now - they will know exactly what they need to do to poach the 'talent'.

 

Gender gap - there is one but DG sounds like he is moving in the right direction

 

Gary on c£1.8m -worth every penny and he has Kids and ex-wives to support, Indeed good job he has those commercials to supplement things too

[DJ Barry Hammond]

 

 Haven't spotted Andrew Neil in the list? @MattP might be suprised at that - I might tweet him offering my condolences ?

 

Lineker is in for a bit of stick (and Shearer). His pay bracket is head and shoulders above most, yet the content he provides is minimal compared to some (especially across news). And in his BT Sport gig too, that level of pay looks outrageous - especially consider Mark Chapman's just as good if not better imo.

 

Chris Evans will always receive stick - but I expect his pay was ballooned by the ill-fated Top Gear. He also runs a production company, as does Graham Naughton - it's not clear whether those costs are included in the figures yet.

[Tuna]

Just now, DJ Barry Hammond said:

 

 Haven't spotted Andrew Neil in the list? @MattP might be suprised at that - I might tweet him offering my condolences ?

 

Lineker is in for a bit of stick (and Shearer). His pay bracket is head and shoulders above most, yet the content he provides is minimal compared to some (especially across news). And in his BT Sport gig too, that level of pay looks outrageous - especially consider Mark Chapman's just as good if not better imo.

 

Chris Evans will always receive stick - but I expect his pay was ballooned by the ill-fated Top Gear. He also runs a production company, as does Graham Naughton - it's not clear whether those costs are included in the figures yet.

Neil is on there in the 200 to 250 k bracket.

[Super_horns]

Well as its a tax payer funded business accused of being very left wing  unless they were paid peanuts which isn't going to happen there will be anger at how much Evans, Lineker get paid regardless of how much it was. 

 

I can already see the Sun and Mail headline now!

 

[Tuna]

150 k for McEnroe for 2 weeks work?

 

Fooks sake.

[Carl the Llama]

If I'm reading page 126 correctly they're operating at a loss of £355m 

[wasthedestroyer]

Some of the salaries on there are unreal.

[Guest MattP]

8 minutes ago, DJ Barry Hammond said:

 

 Haven't spotted Andrew Neil in the list? @MattP might be suprised at that - I might tweet him offering my condolences ?

 

Lineker is in for a bit of stick (and Shearer). His pay bracket is head and shoulders above most, yet the content he provides is minimal compared to some (especially across news). And in his BT Sport gig too, that level of pay looks outrageous - especially consider Mark Chapman's just as good if not better imo.

 

Chris Evans will always receive stick - but I expect his pay was ballooned by the ill-fated Top Gear. He also runs a production company, as does Graham Naughton - it's not clear whether those costs are included in the figures yet.

Neil is in there, in the 200-250k bracket, incredibly Eddie Mair and Andrew Marr get paid twice as much as him.

 

Amazed Emily Maitlis isn't on it, she's great on Newsnight.

 

Lineker and Evans salaries are absolutely absurd, scandalous in fact, not to mention Alan Shearer on half a million a year just about.

[Guest MattP]

19 minutes ago, LestaAl said:

Gary on c£1.8m -worth every penny and he has Kids and ex-wives to support, Indeed good job he has those commercials to supplement things too

I presume this is sarcasm? £1.8 million to present a football highlights show and the odd live match once a week for 9 months?

 

He doesn't even have to think on his feet like the news or political presenters. 

[Guest MattP]

Danny Dyer on 250k a year

 

I've never even heard of the highest paid actors....

[Finnegan]

10 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

If I'm reading page 126 correctly they're operating at a loss of £355m 

 

Well, it's a public service not a for-profit organisation. 

 

Our total expenditure is what? 800 billion? 

 

Kinda makes the beeb look peanuts. 

 

(Am by no means suggesting there isn't waste, there definitely is and some of these salaries are vile.) 

[LestaAl]

3 minutes ago, MattP said:

I presume this is sarcasm? £1.8 million to present a football highlights show and the odd live match once a week for 9 months?

 

He doesn't even have to think on his feet like the news or political presenters. 

Yes it was. I suspect though his BBC earnings are on a downward trend as I am sure I read somewhere he was going to take a pay cut.

 

Equally though he pulls in a lot of people to the BBC and don't doubt he could go to the commercial sector where pay rates are higher. 

[Guest MattP]

Just now, LestaAl said:

Yes it was. I suspect though his BBC earnings are on a downward trend as I am sure I read somewhere he was going to take a pay cut.

 

Equally though he pulls in a lot of people to the BBC and don't doubt he could go to the commercial sector where pay rates are higher. 

He would be doing a lot more work then though, I find the most offensive thing how much it is for how little he does. It's one day a week.

[Carl the Llama]

Just now, Finnegan said:

 

Well, it's a public service not a for-profit organisation. 

 

Our total expenditure is what? 800 billion? 

 

Kinda makes the beeb look peanuts. 

But we're talking one organisation, not an entire country, and surely it defeats the purpose of TV licencing if they can't keep spending broadly within what it raises?  They really shouldn't be paying such gross sums to certain 'talents' if they're going that far over budget.

[LestaAl]

4 minutes ago, MattP said:

He would be doing a lot more work then though, I find the most offensive thing how much it is for how little he does. It's one day a week.

...yes, I think he thanked his agent on Twitter earlier...

[Bellend Sebastian]

Blimey, not only is The One Show's Alex Jones played by a woman, it's a woman getting paid over £400 grand!

 

I could be Alex Jones for a fraction of that

[Guest MattP]

The real scandal of course is still that you have to pay this to watch TV under the threat of being locked in a cage, how that can still happen is beyond me, imagine being told before you buy a copy of the Guardian to read you also have to pay for The Mail even if you don't even want to look at it.

 

(and for the record I would pay it and think it's value for money)

 

P.S No Michael Portillo! That's an absolute scandal as well, how is he not on £150,000 for all his Railway Journeys and This Week.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

9 minutes ago, MattP said:

He would be doing a lot more work then though, I find the most offensive thing how much it is for how little he does. It's one day a week.

 

Yeah, it's not 'tough' work either is it. The odd excursion to the US for the Masters, A World Cup here, a Euro's there, The Olympics? 

 

I do wonder though whether there's a bit more internally that he does - and this is the biggest criticism I have with the list, it doesn't provide any explanation off what the BBC get out of it (like number of episodes, image rights and the like)

[DJ Barry Hammond]

1 minute ago, MattP said:

The real scandal of course is still that you have to pay this to watch TV under the threat of being locked in a cage, how that can still happen is beyond me, imagine being told before you buy a copy of the Guardian to read you also have to pay for The Mail even if you don't even want to look at it.

 

(and for the record I would pay it and think it's value for money)

 

P.S No Michael Portillo! That's an absolute scandal as well, how is he not on £150,000 for all his Railway Journeys and This Week.

 

Isn't big problem here what you replace it with? General taxation? Levy from other broadcasters (they'd hate that!)?

 

If we consider the lience fee is very similar to tax, we have to accept that we all find things we don't directly use for the greater good.

 

If there was a better solution - I think it would have been implemented by now, but maybe the move to Online will force the need to think harder.

[Finnegan]

3 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

But we're talking one organisation, not an entire country, and surely it defeats the purpose of TV licencing if they can't keep spending broadly within what it raises?  They really shouldn't be paying such gross sums to certain 'talents' if they're going that far over budget.

 

I assume that business model went out of the window years ago. They know there's no way they can ever hike up the licence fee enough to cover the costs, it's just damage limitation really isn't it? 

 

Like your council tax doesn't cover anywhere near the running cost of your local authority. There's always going to be money from central government. 

 

But with the entertainment industry what it is and the beeb having to offer competitive salaries to try and keep talent from going to sky or wherever else, there probably reaches a point where it's just impossible to ever break even. 

 

I mean we all love Peaky Blinders and the like but making even a six episode mini series of that kinda quality has got to just be an enormous money sink. Selling it to Netflix isn't going to make it profitable, just recoup some of the loss. 

 

End of the day it comes down to whether or not you believe the government has an obligation to provide cultural enrichment (don't laugh) as a basic public service. 

 

Personally, I'd like to think so. 

 

Let's axe a couple of billion off the defence budget, that's probably just two less cruise missiles a year anyway, and make the BBC competitive with HBO knocking out countless world class dramas as an international market leader so we're not always just watching American crap. 

 

Even Mattp can get behind that policy, surely?

 

 

[Captain...]

Football fans complaining about the wages of TV personalities for "not doing much".

 

[DJ Barry Hammond]

17 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

But we're talking one organisation, not an entire country, and surely it defeats the purpose of TV licencing if they can't keep spending broadly within what it raises?  They really shouldn't be paying such gross sums to certain 'talents' if they're going that far over budget.

 

The BBC make up a significant amount of their funding by syndicating shows and selling on content - so a loss one year could be recouped by increased sales in another.

[Mike Oxlong]

So Gary Lineker gets paid more than ten times more than what we pay the Prime Minister !

 

Actually, that probably sounds about right. 

[Guest MattP]

14 minutes ago, DJ Barry Hammond said:

Isn't big problem here what you replace it with? General taxation? Levy from other broadcasters (they'd hate that!)?

 

If we consider the lience fee is very similar to tax, we have to accept that we all find things we don't directly use for the greater good.

They just ask people to pay it rather than force them to under the threat of going to jail? It that really such a bizarre concept?

 

I'm sure people still would pay as they would continue to see quality television. If they didn't, then you really have to wonder why they lag so far behind other channels that actually can get people to pay to watch them.

 

14 minutes ago, Finnegan said:

Let's axe a couple of billion off the welfare/foreign aid budget, that's probably just two Ethopian Spice Girl bands or a few pints a for some dosser year anyway, and make the BBC competitive with HBO knocking out countless world class dramas as an international market leader so we're not always just watching American crap. 

 

Even Mattp can get behind that policy, surely?

I probably could

 

11 minutes ago, Captain... said:

Football fans complaining about the wages of TV personalities for "not doing much".

 

You don't get put into prison if you refuse to pay to contribute towards a footballers wage because you want to watch Wimbledon. I'm not sure how hard that is to understand.