BBC cuts jobs and programmes but keeps gravy train

Never mind complaints from the Daily Mail about PC BBC, what winds me up is how the BBC will cut jobs and programmes but retain its fat cats.

In an excellent article, Rachel Oldroyd reports on the BBC gravy train at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

...What isn’t touched on, however, is the far more difficult issue of the many high salaries paid out to talent.

Earlier this year, under increased public pressure, the BBC revealed for the first time that 19 radio and TV stars were paid more than £500,000 and that a total of £14.6m was paid out to ‘talent’ earning more than £1m.

The BBC’s annual report, boasted it had cut overall spending on presenters, journalists and musicians by £9m and that nearly a third of this – £2.9m – related to those earning more than £100,000.

But a deeper analysis of the report reveals that the cut to high-paid talent amounted to just 4.2%, a tiny fraction more than the 4% cut made to the BBC’s overall staffing costs.

In other words, the BBC cut its talent bill in line with other staff cuts. So much for cutting back on talent.

The Corporation also paid out £65m to just 274 members of its ‘talent’ earning six or seven figure salaries.

The majority of the BBC’s ‘talent’ actually earn less than £50,000 – 50,029 people in fact.

Yet this massive pool costs the Corporation £140m, just over double that paid out to its superstars.

Many of those earning less than £50,000 would only have been employed for a very short period – an extra in one show for example – so the comparison is not totally fair.

What the comparison does reveal, however, is just how much a small number of people earn.

The BBC will argue it needs to pay ‘stars’ such high rates, otherwise they would jump ship and go to rival, commercial channels.

The answer to this is: really? How many other similar high-end openings are there? Freelancers in television often struggle to earn over £30,000 a year, let alone four times this.

Before the BBC starts cutting into its bedrock news coverage, perhaps it should properly address the money paid out to some of the stars that earn well-over six figure salaries.

If the Corporation can find a way to cut its senior management bill by 25% by the end of this year, surely it can shave a bit more than 4.2% off the £65m it pays out to highly-paid stars?