Morning:
4°c
A BBC reporter, asked for his assessment of the quality of the management of the corporation, answers the question with an anecdote.
He recalls how he was walking through Television Centre a few days ago and observed Jana Bennett.
Bennett is Head of Vision, which is another way of saying she oversees the other executives who oversee television and the BBC's internet output, for which she is rewarded with a salary package of £536,000.
She is one of the 47 BBC executives who is paid more than the £197,000 earned a year by the British Prime Minister.
"She was standing surrounded by a bunch of her acolytes as she held forth. They weren't quite bowing in her presence but they were certainly fawning over her. It was ridiculous. And I thought, what does she actually do for the BBC? What is the point of her?"
The reporter is adamant that I must not use his name, or even reveal which branch of the BBC he works in for he let his anger show when his programme-making budget was slashed again and he is now cast as a member of the awkward squad.
He cannot conceal his loathing for the interlocking layers of highly paid managers, of questionable competence, who smother the programme-makers.
The irony of this culture of silence is not lost on him. "My job as a reporter is to get people to speak frankly but if it was known I was talking in what I believe is the public interest about a public institution, I would be fired," he says.
In his demand for anonymity, the reporter is certainly not being overdramatic, because his fear in talking about the institution he still just about adores, in the manner of an abused lover, is shared by numerous past and present BBC staffers interviewed for these articles. There is an institutional terror of talking publicly about the fears that have dominated the conscious hours of everyone who works there.
The BBC is currently assailed from all sides by hostile public reaction to the salaries of its executives, the remuneration of its "talent", and the awfulness of much of its output, particularly its television.
But for the people who work there, the primary cause of anxiety and alienation is rather the stifling, enervating effects of the vast BBC bureaucracy, and its militant new outrider, Compliance.
One news editor working at Millbank, newly promoted, recalls being summoned to a management away-day team-building exercise.
"Congratulations," the management trainee man told the group, "you are now part of the elite cadre of the top 2,000 BBC managers." The journalist understandably wanted to cut his own throat.
The Jana Bennett critic describes the effect of this pressure as "like a giant inverted triangle bearing down on those of us still trying to make programmes".
The number of producers and researchers has been slashed so that in many current affairs programmes the reporter is working alone, without any oversight, and no back-up in the office to check facts.
Meanwhile, reporters and editors live in fear of any sort of row which might trigger the dreaded outcome of a "Compliance Audit", which often follows a charge of bias or bad taste, when teams of officials will descend to the editorial floor to make sure that reporter, editor and producer all ticked the correct boxes.
Various seemingly unrelated factors have combined to create the current state of crisis at the BBC but the trigger for recent headlines has been the fiasco of the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand affair and their bullying of the actor Andrew Sachs.
The incident has since metastasised into a wider general bafflement over the scale of salaries which BBC executives award themselves and their stars.
A series of interviews for this investigation reveals that Bennett, a 30-year BBC lifer, is unpopular within the corporation.
But in the way all office rivalries generally relate to puny detail, BBC journalists seize on the trivia that emerged from the BBC's belated stab at transparency in publishing the expenses of its senior executives.
Bennett spent £100 of licence-payers' money in sending flowers to Jonathan Ross, claimed £35 to have her hair styled before an interview, and thought contract discussions with Jeremy Paxman should be conducted over a lunch for which she claimed £231.55.
Most bizarrely, she claimed £500 when her handbag was stolen "while on official BBC business", though it seems ultimately the cost was picked up by her insurers rather than the BBC.
Such are the financial details that are guaranteed to inflame office rivalries. Mark Byford is deputy director-general, a job title that no one inside the corporation understands, and which used not to exist.
Staffers anyway prefer to call him Mark Bypass ("as in personality", a producer explains).
As ultimate "head of all its journalisms", he presumably oversees Bennett as she oversees all the other executives.
No doubt he works extremely hard, but despite the splendid ambition of his role and his salary package of more than half a million, he files his expenses with the zeal of a cub reporter on the Ham and High rubbing along on £14,000 a year.
Last year, Byford put in claims for newspapers of £1.25 a go, and £3.60 for his train ticket to an England/Scotland international, though it is not explained on the published form why attending a rugby match at the weekend is deemed a working expense for the deputy director-general with no specific oversight role in sport.
But those who speak out against Mr Byford do not care much about these, or even his claim (£3) for withdrawing money from an Israeli cash machine during a working visit.
But they are especially cross that a man on more than half a million pounds a year charged licence payers £14.99 for a history of Queen's Park Rangers football club given to a departing colleague.
Several present and former BBC staffers lamented to the Evening Standard how the traditional camaraderie has been destroyed. Before the explosion in salaries, which gathered pace in the John Birt era but built up steam during the rule of Greg Dyke, everyone felt underpaid at the BBC.
But that was regarded as the flipside of working in public-service broadcasting.
Now vast salaries and commensurate pension allowances are justified on the grounds of stopping a drift of talent to the private sector.
This argument has disintegrated, given the advertising crash and the parlous financial state of ITV, Channel 4 and Five.
"Where on earth are these dozens of executives on more that £200,000 supposed to be going?," asks one BBC reporter. "They are literally unemployable outside the BBC."
One former executive, who has since turned freelance, was involved for a while in setting salaries. She said the entire process was bizarre.
Various pressures would be applied, and deals struck to justify specific little bundles of cash and benefits being chucked at those deemed to be stars.
There is particular fury across the news operation at the tendency of "stars" to be given salary bumps out of separate budgets for bringing glamour to the dry world of documentary and news gathering.
For instance, on top of a rumoured basic package of close to £1 million for his Radio 2 show, Jeremy Vine is understood to be paid a further £250,000 for Panorama and other work when it is clear that in some editions of Panorama he has little input beyond reading out a few sentences.
Vine and Jeremy Paxman are said by BBC colleagues to be locked into an ultra-competitive contest about their respective salaries.
Reporters of the old-school wince not just at this but at the patronising way BBC executives feel viewers of serious programmes need chewier subjects to be made more accessible to the dimmer licence-fee payers through the input of celebrities.
Recent headlines have been generated by Jonathan Ross's £6 million-a-year contract but salary inflation has gathered pace even among those who, though familiar faces, are not by any definition "stars".
"When I joined the BBC everyone was underpaid, so that was fine," recalls Tracey Scoffield, who now has a private production company and is one of the few former BBC staffers still working in television who is prepared to speak on the record.
She left the corporation five years ago, shortly after her 10-year employment anniversary when she got a letter from Human Resources awarding her an extra half-day's holiday a year.
"I thought, God, I've got to get out of this place," she says, and she did, not realising how miserable she had become working there.
This is a common observation from BBC people who leave the corporation to go freelance or join independent companies.
Scoffield stresses that the BBC is still full of highly creative and talented people who work extremely hard but the overall ethos of the place she describes as soul-destroying.
"Most senior people at the BBC spend their days in meetings. There is total paralysis, no one is empowered to take decisions. It's like working in the NHS or in education - meetings, meetings."
Though the BBC speaks the modish corporate language about investing in people, Scoffield says it is a strangely bad employer. "They're just not good to their staff. You're not praised or rewarded for good work.
"They talk endlessly about empowering you but actually they keep you in your place. One is endlessly summoned for 'appraisals', which in-house are known as 'reprisals', for that is when you are put back in your box."
One veteran BBC presenter, a household name who does not want to be identified, says the central problem with the corporation now is its size. "We have become so big, so dominant, that there's nothing institutional left for us to aim at," he says, noting that when he joined the BBC many years ago bosses were still focused on staying competitive with ITN news output, or the big dramas then still made by the ITV companies.
"But that ambition has gone, and the driving institutional imperative is not to make any cock-ups like the Ross affair."
For him, Mark Thompson, the BBC's director-general, has failed to answer the central question for the 17,000 members of staff, not including thousands more freelancers.
"What is this BBC for? Mark Thompson has not communicated to us what the BBC is for, and I'm not sure he actually knows."
This presenter said he was unaware of the fact that Vine's already vast Radio 2 salary was topped up so significantly for his work on Panorama. (The BBC, following its familiar practice of declining to comment on the salaries of Talent, will not confirm the exact figure.)
Compliance is the nightmare for programme makers, the presenter agreed, for an audit can be triggered by nothing more than a polemical piece in the Daily Mail.
BBC people have huge contempt for the Mail yet they flatter its power by being terrified that one article could trigger a programme editor to having their collar felt by the corporation's Compliance people.
"I was making a programme and I had Compliance down on me fretting about language that I was using about mental illness," he said.
"The Mail had run a piece, and I said, don't you want this programme to be noticed? The word I got back was: no we don't."
John Humprhys is one of the few current BBC staff who will talk publicly about the goings-on in the corporation.
When I tell him that I have spoken to numerous utterly miserable members of BBC staff, Humphrys laughs.
"I have never known a time in my 45 years at the BBC when morale was not said to be 'rock bottom', when it has not felt from the inside that it is under attack from politicians. That's the nature of an organisation like this."
He concedes that the fiasco of Jonathan Ross's £6 million annual remuneration - which is not far off the entire budget for the Today programme - has caused damage to the BBC's standing.
But he adds that it was caused by the corporation's consistent terror of losing the younger audience, which is not an unreasonable concern.
Several other past and present BBC people emphasised that the BBC spends far too much time talking to itself, and not nearly enough engaging with the outside world, or with its paymasters, the licence-fee payers.
One of the oddest things about talking to BBC people is that they will spend half an hour sounding off about the horrors of the institution, of its bureaucratic culture, of the shameful way its senior executives reward themselves ludicrous amounts of public money.
And then those journalists will say: "I hope you're not writing a Right-wing newspaper attack on the BBC." Everyone spoken to for this series stressed that they back the principle of the BBC as a public-interest broadcaster, and uphold its licence-fee funding model.
As they grumble about the bureaucracy and poor management, most BBC people concede or stress that much of the output remains very good.
Indeed, radio output may never have been better; much of the television drama remains very good, though there is less of it.
BBC Four has done well in pioneering a new form of relatively low-budget drama, and moving away from the familiar bonnet dramas the corporation has excelled at for years.
But the problem remains of how an institution so top heavy, so weighed down by centralised management, can reform itself.
An on-air reporter says it is the second-rate programme-making staff who get shunted up the management ladder.
"It's insane," he says. "We have one of the largest media organisations in the world run by jobbing journalists who couldn't hack it.
"In any private organisation they would eventually be fired, but in the BBC they just keep on climbing up the ladder."
Oddly, though almost everyone inside the BBC, and its former staffers, back the notion of the licence fee, there is widespread pessimism over the corporation's prospects for changing itself.
"The warning here is Gorbachev. Once you start trying to reform an organisation such as the BBC, it collapses, just like the old Soviet Union," says one well-known presenter. "Who, as director-general, is going to say, let's make this place smaller, let's reduce all the salaries, including mine?"
Reader views (48)
There is no need for the BBC other than to control public opinion. The war in Iraq demonstrates that public opinion dosn't matter. Well not unless it's a phone in where they have to pay for it.
If every single output from the BBC had a detailed price tag, we would soon see a change in public opinion.
The license fee should be slashed!
- Tony, Belfast
To all those who want to scrap the BBC, try living in the US for a while. There is no news on TV here, just opinion, most, though not all, on the political right. Public Television has some current affairs programming, but not real news, and they have to buy their foreign coverage. The only available news is the BBC World news shown on most Public stations and on BBC America. Without the BBC the world public would be much less well informed. I can see that the British tax payer might not feel inclined to continue educating the rest of the world, but I fear that a subscription service would never have the income or the clout to continue the standard of news reporting of the present BBC.
- Elspeth Macdougall, Los Angeles USA
Does anyone acatually check how good is BLonde Emily's mandarin. Saying yes and no and how miuch does not constitute to speaking a language. I do understand she lived in Hongkong where Cantonese is widely spoken
- \John, UK
Why oh why weren't you listening to me and publishing my posts years ago when I was spouting off about the Marxist Elitist Bully Boys in charge at the BBC and their wanton watse and extravagence. You ignored me then. Why has it taken so long for you lot to wake up to the facts? Is it because you are so fatuous and blind that it takes insiderfs to 'reveal' the truth? The truth has been crystal clear for years and years.
- Tango Mike, Kensington, London
Can you believe Mark Thompson is on £800,000? And for what? Running an organisation with 22,000 staff and a budget of over £3billion. Pfft. I bet the chief of C4 doesn't get that. What's that? He gets over a million? Well how about the chief of ITV then!
He wanted and got nearly £35M?
Ahhh.
BBC staff always winge. Sure it could be run better, hopefully they'll chop some middle managers. But surveys show the British public love the BBC and it's more popular than ever. And if there's any spare licence fee cash they'd like a refund, not fund ITV/C4 or regional news.
The BBC works. And as everyone in the media strives to find new funding models... (free, subscription?)... it turns out there was one model, the Licence Fee, the guarantees quality for all at a price people are happy to pay.
- Alan Gregory, London
What a pity the unnamed reporter did not film the crowd of courtiers around Jana Bennett: it could have become a YouTube classic, like the film of the Euro MPs signing-in for their expenses early on Friday, so they could buzz off for a 3-day weekend.
- Mdj E10, london uk
It's all very well to sound off about the BBC but we should be mindful of the fact that, flawed as the present structure is,it is one of the best television services in the world. If we loose it, we loose something of our culture. As the article pointed out, the real problem is a structure whereby executives are being paid to manage a system of accountability to fear of being brave. As someone said, the BBC represents the country as a whole and in a climate whereby greed rules and the people suffer it isn't surprising that there is need of a change to society to just good sense in making decisions, with a clear vision of what is needed. The Labour government had the chance and turned it into spin. Will the future government do any better? Will the BBC change for the better? I have hope. The programme makers in this country are some of the finest in the world and we have the potential of having the finest Tv in the world.....still.
- Alfred Barker, Ickham Kent UK
I really can't believe the size of the wages at the BBC.
This next remark may cause a little backlash in current circumstances but......
Are the jobs these people are doing worth many times that of the Prime Minister.
We the Licence payers are footing their wages...I don't think a newsreader/ journalist is worth the £650,000 "quoted" in the article.
Do we as the payers of the license fee have any say in these matters..????
I have long been a fan of the BBC, however, I am starting to think that the BBC has forgotten that it is funded by a licence that they are all to quick to say is value for money....if the sums involved in this article are correct....that can't be true!
- Shaun White, Northampton/London, UK
One of the ex-actors from The Bill was on the radio the other night saying that 120 people had been sacked from the programme. 120. This is the reality of life in the world of television - of course the BBC is not in the real world and should be closed down.
I don't doubt David Cameron will do a number on it, it's about time someone did.
- Danny Nolan, tottenham london
If they didn't pay so much to these staff members perhaps BBC America wouldn't consist of constant repeats and could have some original programs now and then
- Linzi, Largo, USA
Back during the last recession, as a student in Oxford, I briefly looked into the possibility of doing a summer internship at the BBC in London.
I dropped the idea pretty quickly when I saw that the commitment had to be for at least a couple of months and they were clear that NO EXPENSES WHATSOEVER would be paid. It didn't seem to have occurred to the BBC--or maybe they weren't that bothered--that many young people wouldn't be able to rustle up the £1000+ necessary to live on. The Beeb then went through one of their occasional spasms of hand-wringing: "Oh gosh, there are far too many white people here!"--as someone pointed out at the time, who cares what skin colour the Tarquins have so long as they are still mostly Tarquins?
- Liz, London, UK
Presumbably you'd prefer the garbbage shown on SKY and would like the news commentators to call the winner of the next election as is what happened with Fox (also owned by Murdoch)when it was Bush vs Gore. Love how the BBC is accused of bias by both Labour and the Tories yet around the world it is looked up to as a paragon of publicly-funded television, not least for the lack of adverts that disturb viewing.
Taking potshots at the BBC is a cheap and easy way to score points amongst the cretins who vote Tory and don't give a stuff about society, only themselves. Everyone complaining about the licence fee has a 'me, me, me' attitude in their postings.
We need an independent news organisation to stand up to ALL politicians and you can't have that is you take away the licence fee.
The Little Englanders who have written most of these comments are the people who make me despairing of Britain and its future - these are the people who believer everything they read in the press, unquestioningly.
As someone who watches anything on ITV extremely rarely and whose HD recorder is full of programmes on all BBC and C4 channels (the public service broadcasters you'll note)I'm very happy to pay the licence fee.
- Helen, London
There is fear and loathing OUTSIDE the BBC as well. The viewers. Remember us?
- Albert Hall, hove england
The BBC is a collosal joke, end of story. Axe the licence fee and fire unproductive/overpaid managers, executives, presenters and "stars". The output is dire, not to mention the cheek they have to put a PC slant on everything!!! To say that it is being milked is the understatement of the century. Bye Bye BBC.
- Christian, Buckhurst Hill, Essex.
Let Market Forces run the BBC, like they've run the Banking Sector ? No thank you. The Beeb might be going through a sticky patch at the moment but it is still the least worse broadcasting company in the world.
- Ventnorfan, Isleworth, Middx
The BBC is sinply no longer fit for purpose. The licence fee should be scrapped and the organisation disbanded. Let the arrogant metropolitans who staff this ridiculous body find another life.
- James Elliott, Eastborne UK
This is waht happens when the discipline of the market is over-ridden. They always get their money regardless. meanwhile the commercial sector fight for advertising evenue that's dried up.
All these managers are a disgrace but Brown won't act. he needs the BBC and I bet these 'bosses' have made that clear to him.
BBC1 should be sold off. BBC2/3/4 should be given clearly defined programme output which is supplementary to - and not in competition with - the private sector. Wonder if these cretins would get their pay elswhere.. lets put it to the test.
- Graham, England
How much does it cost to send F1 losers Eddie Irvine and David Courtfield to every Grand Prix? Is a studio in the UK not good enough for them? If they are using their 'connections' for information can they not just use the phone? Stop the waste and lower the licence fee!
- Mc, London
.. and yet another reason for the majority of UK's population to now refer to it as the anti-British Broadcasting Corporation!
- Joe, Thornton Heath, London, England
Are you listening, David Cameron - On General Election day+one, abolish the BBC Licence Fee. Job done.
- Ted, London
It is structural - and the comparison with the USSR is instructive. The BBC was created in the era of Soviet insitutional creation (1920s) and the results, obviously, are Soviet in their nature - overly political, run by cliques and oligarchs, patronising to a comsumer they secretly detest, funded on a basis that requires any market disciplines/measurements to be invented, and (as a consequence) a massively, massively efficient producer of poor quality goods.
As for those that defend the BBC's structure because they think it defends quality - please note: there is no irrevocable link between the BBC’s output and the BBC’s funding mechanism. Both are a consequence of its founding constitution, sure, but the licence fee and the BBC’s Royal Charter (that guarantees quality) are mutually exclusive elements. Only in the mindsets of the north London Guardianistas are the two elements bound tightly together - because they fear the the BBC will lose its left wing "balance" if it depends on market-generated income? But surely the Charter remains in force no matter how the dosh rolls in? If so (and I've yet to hear it ain't so) you could retain the charter and move to a global subscription model (so still avoiding advertising) - killing the hated and outdated poll tax on UK homes. It can be done (look at HBO, or even Sky). And relieved of the albatros of the licence fee, and the execs could pay themselves what they like!
- Milton-Not-Keynes, London
I see Sky is investing money (that it has earned) in an online music business.
Quick! The BBC will now have to get into that business as well and probably the best way is to make all the music "free at the point of use" and use the license fee to pay for it.
That way we all win (except Murdoch!).
- Steve, London, UK
Emily's dad aside, few of them represent value for (licence payer's) money.
- Roger, Twickenham
Times are changing. When the Tories get into power, the first thing they should do is scrap the BBC TV Licence and sell off the Corp. It would reduce the National Debt at a stroke - and be extremely popular.
- C.Baxter, London
This "organization" distorts the whole social structure, where grossly overpaid non-entities of questionable social value thrive. It has had its day. The license fee must go within the next 5 years.
- Gamini, Reading, UK
Scrap the BBC poll tax & replace it with pay to view.
The BBC at its best is very fine, but its Left/Liberal bias is unsustainable
when we have other sources of news which give the lie to the BBC line on most issues.
People are free to buy what newspaper they wish. The BBC political line is
essentially that of the Guardian + the Independent.
Compare their sales to the Mail + Telegraph + Sun + Times + Express + Star
etc and you see how extreme & unrepresentative the BBC is
- British Not Racist, Bracknell England
And here was me thinking my lot were overpiad. At least some us generate massive amounts of revenue (even if the guys on the next desk nearly blow up the bank).
I might not speak manadarin but I do have a first class degree and a PhD in applied physics, but I still can't work out what Emily Maitlis actually does to deserve to get that sort of pay from a public institution? There must be 100s of similarly educated people who would do the job just as well for a fraction of the price.
That she is making efforts to avoid tax (not evade, but morally just as bad) too is just shocking. When will someone stop these crazy contracts at the BBC?
I suppose at least programmes such as Top Gear and Antiques road show can be sold around the world and make some revenue but a stand in newsreader?
- Investment Banker, London
Emily Maitlis is worth every penny of that £650K.
She's gorgeous.
- Anthony, Esher, Surrey
Someone at Aunite is deluded if they think ITV, Sky , C4 or 5 would pay Ross 6 mil. Never in a month of Sundays. C'mon , give him 1 mil , tell him to take it or leave it...he'll rip yer hand....I'm available to do your contract negoiations...all conducted in a pub over a pint or a G & T...not a £250 lunch! Its our money that we're forced at gunpoint to pay. No choice, no free market...Stalinist dictatorship!
- Richard , Duke Of Leeds, City of Leeds, Kinghdom of Yorkshire
The BBC is commercially enterprising in that many of its salaried executives and big-wigs run private companies who supply the talent and programmes to the BBC. Since the BBC got rid of many of its programme making departments, it now buys from outsources. These are often from its own executives/their relatives and from its 'stars', many of whom run 'production' companies. Another kind of nepotism since the bad old days, but far worse in that it lowers the standards of quality and choice and costs us an awful lot. Literally, anything goes. Naturally fees and costs are charged at whatever the outsourcers think they can get away with. For some, the BBC has become a big institutional gravy train to be milked as fast and as shamelessly as possible. As opposed to the BBC of pre Birtian times.
These people are extremely powerful. Their clout is huge among the serfs. Kow-towing IS the order of the day. As is the somnambulistic state they've driven their audiences to with unprecedentedly poor programmes and mediocre creative talents. It's the greedy, over-salaried executives and their disastrous decision making who are likely to see the demise of the BBC (or its licence funding) far sooner than James Murdoch will.
The present BBC executive seems very much like our expenses padding, grabbity politicians. In their present form, both are perceived as over-paid, under-performing expendables, perhaps clinging to the same sinking ship.
- Steven, London
Good grief - scrap the tax and get rid of the BBC. My money would be put to better use to warm my house, during this winter of discontent.
- Tax Free Tv, London
IPlayer should be charged for as so many expats and migrants use it for free via a vpn etc. British TV and news is world class and the rest of world wants it but its not fair if uk taxes are funding it.
- Stuz Graz, Wimbledon, London
cant wait for DC to get rid of the Biased BBC and cap the pay no more than the pm's wage.serves them right for being right up lie bores ar se .why should we pay a tax that was from the 1950's sky have subscription why not the beeb,then watch people leave them in droves
- David Fitzgerald, coventry,england
"Scoffield stresses that the BBC is still full of highly creative and talented people who work extremely hard but the overall ethos of the place she describes as soul-destroying"
She could well be talking about the Met Police or NHS here - both essentially great organisations that have been poisoned by suffocating bureaucracy, manic obsession with political correctness and pandering to the fascist left liberal agenda at the cost of common sense and freedom of expression.
As a Police Officer it breaks my heart to see a once great Police Force be ruined by a totally spineless incompetent Government hell-bent on politicising the Job and creating ranks of desk bound office-jockey Senior Officers who are totally out of touch with front line Police.
If the Senior Management in these organisations used some desperately needed common sense and actually LISTENED to troops on the ground then everyone would be alot happier!
- Anon Pc, London, UK
A friend of mine has a Freeview box and lives in an area with poor digital reception. Consequently the only channels she can receive are from the BBC, as well as ITV and Channel 4. When you spend a length of time watching solely the BBCs output you realise what a gigantic waste of money the entire corporation is. The standard of programmes is utterly abysmal, and one long exercise in political correctness. If it stopped broadcasting tomorrow I wouldn't miss it for a second. It has become a complete joke and only exists to act as a the propaganda wing of New Labour.
- Rob, London
I have given up on telly.
Life is fuller without it.
- Jimfred, London UK
If the BBC is for the British then over the next few years it should scale down the UK market and develop the World Service
- Amazonmothe, hasting
The BBC needs to choose whether it wants to be a public service or a competitive commercial media company. If it wants to be the latter, then it has no right to be funded by a tax and the advantage it has over its competitors is grotesquely unfair. BBC1 and Radio 1 and 2 are no more a "public service" than ITV, Capital Radio and Heart FM. Why should they get the funding they do instead of having to struggle for advertising with their rivals? Why is it in our interests to pay for those particular entertainment channels instead of others? Why don't taxes subsidise movies or video games instead of Eastenders and the Chris Moyles show? I see little difference in principle.
Those who talk about Murdoch taking over should look at just how colossal the BBC's market advantage is over Sky and every other broadcaster.
- Kevin T, Beckenham, Kent
I can understand the sense of loathing the reporter must feel for public sector BBC executives earning crazy salaries.
I recently found out that the incompetent executives in the Financial Services Authority, which presided over the UK financial industry collapse, have instead of being sacked or made redundant, received significant pay rises where even middle managers are paid over six figure salaries. The higher salaries are apparently to "help attract higher calibre employees".
When the Tories extinguish the FSA next year, they must ensure that its ex employees face the same cold wind of unemployment that the rest of us are experiencing.
- Mike, London
Scrap the TV Poll Tax and axe the Biased BBC
- Alan, Newbury
This article has made the strongest argument for privatisation of the BBC that I have ever heard. The Licence fee needs to go now!
- Stephen, London
I don't see a problem with the BBC paying stars or valuable executives large wages as long as they are in line with other broadcasters. They must pay the going rate or they will be lost, it is just a fact of business. If you don't pay Jeremy Paxman the right amount, he will go straight to Sky or ITV... everyone wants to earn as much money as they can and anyone who says different is simply lying...
- Donald D, London
The BBC is one of the Crown Jewels of this country. It may well be over managed and those managers overpaid but that can be fixed.
Do away with the licence fee and teh BBC and then watch Murdoch take over the air waves and the news agenda. You'll soon be pining for the 'old BBC'
- Pete London, London, UK
£650,000? For any journalist that seems excessive. News reporters ought to be paid more than newsreaders who, increasingly it seems, are paid for their pretty faces rather than any real work or intelligence.
- Sandeep Murthy, Oxford
In general, it is nigh on impossible to get sacked if you are sucking at the Public Sector teat.
Unless, of course, you deviate in any way from the slavish protocols of political correctness.
If BBC managerial salaries were capped at, say, £75,000, how many do you think would leave? And how long would the queue be to replace any that did?
- John P, London, England
Too much management - that's pretty much anything run by the State: 2 guys in Whitehall for every fighting soldier, 2 guys in Whitehall for every farmer. The solution is not necessarily privitisation, as some previous privitisations have shown - but sure as heck they need some 'right-sizing' at the top end of things.
- Roz, France
Scrapping the TV-TAX is long over due.
The arrogance of the socialist led BBC is second only to the Labour government.
You don't even have to talk to disgruntled employees in darken rooms. The content and not even subliminal Liberal-Lefty political messages that spew from the BBC is sickening.
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
Perhaps if there was no licence and the BBC was forced to compete for business in the real world instead of being funded by forced taxation their salaries would be more modest and based on productivity.
- Peter, Harrow, UK
