Scrutiny...
Of course, the ones paying REALLY close attention to this publication will be the nice people at HMRC.
I bet there's some loose sphincters at the BBC "talent" dept. today.
The BBC is trembling with excitement following the enforced publication of the annual salaries of on-screen stars earning more than £150,000 at the tax-funded broadcaster. Exclusive to all news outlets everywhere this morning (actual figures were embargoed until 11am to ensure that the key lunchtime news rush would be …
The whole thing is pointless unless all media are required to publish the details of how much they all pay. Starting with the Murdoch media and the Daily Wail.
Indeed. Many were wailing as to whether Chris Evans is worth 10 Clare Baldings (who earned a paltry £150-200k), but conveniently ignored the fact that she doesn't actually do much work for the BBC. Although Balding seems to be ubiquitous, a huge amount of her work is for ITV, C4 or BT Sport (Horse Racing, Paralympics, The Clare Balding Show, etc). Despite T May's assertions, it is not "like for like" work. Some of the people on the list do one show a week, others are full time.
Balding's only regular BBC gig is the Sunday Hour on R2, which puts her well amongst other niche output radio presenters.
Evans/Lineker are outliers who we don't care about for purposes of overall gender analysis - what's more concerning is there are no women in positions 3-7 - where 5 men block out the £500k-£1Mil bracket.
People paying attention would have noticed this is payment from the license fee only: This isn't how much they earn in total, or how much the BBC are paying them in total - they could be paid in part (or in the case of some missing names, fully) from the commercial arm of the BBC which isn't included in the list, in addition to earnings from other sources, such as (as is mentioned below) production companies, shares etc.
So more smoke and mirrors and outrage and a promise from the BBC to cut wages... or at least move payment away from the public eye.
No loose sphincters involved: Just some quiet shell-games as they shuffle the money around a bit.
The Doctor is criminally underpaid. The guy who plays Charlie from Casualty (who's been in it since the beginning) gets about twice as much as Peter Capaldi. Shocking.
Though to be fair, these figures don't include separate licensing type deals, so it's possible Capaldi gets lots of cash in merchandising rights. Which I doubt there's much of for Casualty, it not being a massive global brand.
The Doctor is criminally underpaid. The guy who plays Charlie from Casualty (who's been in it since the beginning) gets about twice as much as Peter Capaldi. Shocking.
Though to be fair, these figures don't include separate licensing type deals, so it's possible Capaldi gets lots of cash in merchandising rights.
I would say that's almost certainly the case - Merchandising will be managed by BBC Worldwide, who are a private company like ITV or C4 and consequently have not had to release figures (also why Attenborough is not on the list - his Nature Docs are commissioned by Worldwide).
'Recently'?! Look up how Harry S Truman first got elected, starting with his very first political job, a County 'Judge', really kind of a commissioner.
Space left for discussion of Daley, father and son
More space left for Tammany Hall. Hint: Tammany Hall was started in the mid 1780s, or just after the French pried what's now the US loose from Britain.
And it's not recent in the UK, either. <cough> Rotten borough </cough>
Of course the real news today is that the retirement date has quietly been pushed forward to 68 for those currently between 39 and 47.
Retirement will be the new Fusion, always 20 years away. Maybe the government will good enough to provide us with those nice relaxing rooms with the music and nature videos that were featured in the film Soylent Green.
Or he wasn't actually employed by the BBC but by the production company that made Top Gear. These are only the salaries of people directly contracted to the BBC so all those like Chris Evans or Graham Norton who have TV production companies as well as BC contracts are paid even more.
That said, so fucking what!
Top Gear IS produced by the BBC.
In other news, seems like Wiki are begging again.
As someone said, this doesn't include people paid by production companies. Or merchandising deals and the like. So it's only a partial list. I can imagine a few more stars wanting to use their own production companies because of it - as clearly the Beeb then won't be publishing their salaries.
Although I guess the real PR trick is to get a really low base salary, and have the rest paid as a percentage of merchandising rights, or a separate contract with your own production company.
So is the BBC any different to any other similar sized organisation? What about the top echelons of the NHS for example, or the tax office? Or is it just 'let's have a go at Auntie' kind of slow news week?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2017/07/19/bbcs-top-pay-reveals-gender-pay-gap-this-is-normal-just-like-the-rest-of-society/
Exactly. How long before we see all the other "named and shamed" high earners paid by the public purse? Will they be happy about having their personal salary spaffed all over the media and web?
Local council execs, civil servants, NHS etc. It's a big list. And what about when the bar is lowered and anyone paid from the public purse is publicly named along with the salary? They'd all be out on strike, and quite rightly too.
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So is the BBC any different to any other similar sized organisation? What about the top echelons of the NHS for example, or the tax office? Or is it just 'let's have a go at Auntie' kind of slow news week?
If they're civil servants they'll be on pay bands, which are publicly available, the civil service and indeed the armed forces have complete gender pay equality. So the tax office will have, not sure about the NHS though...
@SkippyBing
"If they're civil servants they'll be on pay bands, which are publicly available, the civil service and indeed the armed forces have complete gender pay equality. So the tax office will have, not sure about the NHS though..."
Really? Just bringing in publically available pay bands etc. doesn't give them gender pay equality. Firstly, how many women and how many men in each band? Secondly, the men can still earn at the top of the band and women at the bottom.
'Really? Just bringing in publically available pay bands etc. doesn't give them gender pay equality. Firstly, how many women and how many men in each band? Secondly, the men can still earn at the top of the band and women at the bottom.'
Not sure about the numbers in each band but I suspect it's proportional to the numbers employed with the caveat women are more likely to take a career break to have children so may advance less quickly. But you go up an increment in each band every year until you reach the top of the band*. You advance to the bottom of the next band on promotion, there's no way to pay a women doing the same job less than a man.
This is also why the public sector pay cap is less of a deal than some people make out, until you reach the top of a pay band you get an above inflation pay rise every year just for being there**.
*This has recently changed in the armed forces to a bigger jump every other year but it's still automatic, there are normally ~5 increments in every band.
**Admittedly it's a pain when you reach a top of your pay band at the point they introduce the pay cap and then don't get promoted for 5 years but hey, career choices.
> “But isn’t it quite embarrassing that two-thirds of those paid more than £150,000 are men?”
I would expect that all these "stars" would have agents. People who negotiate their terms and conditions of employment. So if one "star" earns less than another, it can only be because that is what the agent negotiated and what they decided to accept.
If women "stars" are being paid less than men, they should either stop accepting low-ball offers or get themselves better agents.
A more reasonable value for money measure would be to calculate each "stars" £££s per viewer-hour rate. Take their pay and divide it by the number of viewers multiplied by the amount of time the viewers are forced to endure them watch or listen to them.