Media studies: institutions

BBC Trust bows to pressure to publish star presenters' salaries

James Robinson
The Guardian News Thu 1 Jul 2010 10:36 BST
• Dramatic U-turn for trust as it orders BBC to publish salary details of top talent
• Senior executives will take an 8.5% pay cut for each of the next two years

The BBC's governing body has bowed to public pressure and ordered the corporation to publish more details of the salaries paid to its top presenters and stars.
The move could lead to some of the biggest names on television,
including Graham Norton, Jeremy Paxman and Jeremy Clarkson, being
publicly identified as members of an exclusive club of BBC talent who
earn £1m or more.

It risks opening a rift with BBC managers, who have fiercely resisted calls to publish details of individual contracts on confidentiality grounds.

Addressing a Voice of the Listener and Viewer seminar in London tonight, Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, also said senior executives will take an 8.5% pay cut for each of the next two years as the corporation prepares for an era of "severe economic austerity".
The BBC has already told staff paid more than £37,726 a year they will have their pay frozen this year, while those on less will get a flat £475 rise. It also announced plans to close its generous final-salary pension scheme to new employees by the end of the year, and reduce payments made to existing members.

Talks between unions and management over the annual BBC pay deal broke down , with warnings that staff anger over this and the pension proposals could lead to industrial action.
The decision to reveal the sums paid to some of the BBC's stars is a U-turn for the BBC Trust and Lyons. He had argued that making the figures public would place the BBC at a competitive disadvantage.

He said tonight: "You might try to characterise this move as a change of mind," but added that the trust, the BBC's regulatory and governance body, has listened to licence fee payers.
"We believe that this is one of a small number of areas where we need to recapture public confidence," he said. "We know licence fee payers appreciate on-air talent, but this must not come at any cost."

The BBC spent £229m, or 6.56% of the £3.5bn licence fee, on talent in the year to the end of March 2009. Its annual report, due to be published on Monday, is likely to show that figure has fallen slightly.

Lyons admitted that confidentiality agreements and other commercial considerations may make it difficult to release the full details of some stars' contracts.

"But we are challenging the director general [Mark Thompson] to work urgently on a plan to deliver greater transparency about who is at the top end of the talent pay scale. The trust is giving a clear signal that it wants to see change in this area. I do believe we should release the names of those who receive the biggest incomes from the BBC."
He added that did not necessarily mean "disclosing individual salaries".

In a speech designed to demonstrate the BBC will take action to curtail costs, Lyons said savings already identified had to be pushed through more quickly. "The context is one of severe economic austerity, with tax increases for many individuals, big cutbacks to come in many areas of public spending, and continued tough times for many commercial media operators" he said.

Plans to cut the total wage bill for senior BBC managers by 25% would now be implemented within 18 months rather than over three years, he said.
BBC directors, including Thompson, will work for a month without pay for each of the next two years, Lyons said, the equivalent of an 8.5% reduction in pay. They have already agreed to freeze their salaries until the beginning of 2013 and waived all bonuses.

A BBC management spokesman said that taken together, those measures amount to a pay cut of nearly 25%. "That hits wallets," he added.

Lyons said he had instructed BBC executives to publish the total amount spent on all on-screen talent in separate payment bands, ranging from under £250,000 to over £5m, along with the number of people in each band.

There were early signs that BBC executives may resist the trust's demands, however, opening a rift between the corporation's governing body and its executives.

A spokesman for BBC management said it would consider the proposals and respond in due course, but added: "We've been consistent in our view that revealing contractual details of BBC talent is problematic for reasons of confidentiality."

The BBC Trust is currently consulting on the findings of a strategic review led by Thompson, which recommended that a number of services, including BBC 6 Music, should be closed to save money. Lyons said its response to those proposals would be published shortly.

• This story was amended on 1 July 2010. The second paragraph was altered to make it clear that Sir Michael Lyons was asking for the identity of BBC stars in the highest salary band to be revealed, rather than their individual salaries.

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