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http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> News and Comment >> DG defends top salaries http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1262268186 Message started by Administrator on Dec 31^st, 2009, 2:04pm

Title: DG defends top salaries
Post by Administrator on Dec 31^st, 2009, 2:04pm

The BBC's director general has defended the salaries paid to its top managers, saying they could earn considerably more in the private sector.

Mark Thompson was responding to questions from the novelist PD James, who is the guest editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme for the day.

The former BBC governor said it was extraordinary at least 37 BBC managers earned more than the prime minister.
But Mr Thompson said the BBC was still losing key staff to its rivals.
During the interview, Lady James, who was a governor of the BBC from 1988 to 1993, suggested the organisation had lost its way. She said while it was easy to name some programmes of superb quality, others hardly qualified as public service broadcasting.
She asked how Mr Thompson could justify what she called the "extraordinarily large" management salaries. She said they were of immense concern to many people.
Mr Thompson said the BBC was competing with commercial companies for the best people to deliver the best programmes and services.
"If you want to have the best people working for the BBC, delivering the best programmes and the best services, and if you also accept that means particularly at a moment in broadcasting history where people can move very freely from the BBC to other broadcasters and back, the BBC has to bear, to some extent, in mind the external market."
He said the controller of BBC One, who is responsible for an annual £1bn programme budget, took a pay cut to come to the corporation and that most managers received less than they would outside.
Therefore, he said, "you really want to make sure you've got the very best person doing that job.
"I think it's a false economy to say 'well you know what, we're not going to have anyone as controller of BBC One who earns more than £100,000 a year' because in my view you won't get the right candidate for the job."

But Lady James said it was more a question of individuals earning £400,000 a year and "one wonders what exactly these people are doing".
She added: "If people are on £200,00, £400,000 a year, where are they going to go outside that's going to pay them more than that? I don't see where these jobs are in the private sector."
Mr Thompson replied: "We are still absolutely losing key staff to commercial broadcasters who are still paying top dollar."
Cost reduction
He accepted that public service bureaucracies were a "many headed hydra" in which costs were sometimes difficult to keep down.
"Over the last five years we've tried to reduce our overhead costs.
"One of the things that we're looking at is whether we can simply make an auditable, fully accountable commitment to how much of the licence fee we actually spend on content."
Lady James said those earning about £400,000 could not think they were performing a public service "if in fact that is over-payment for what you're doing".
Working for the BBC should be a "privilege," she added, a statement which Mr Thompson said he agreed with.
The expenses and salaries of the BBC's 50 top-earning managers were revealed in June.
Additionally, the salaries and expenses of the BBC's top 100 executives and decision-makers will be published, quarterly, from September.
Mark Thompson's salary in 2008/9 was £834,000. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is paid £197,689.

Source:-
BBC News web-site- "Entertainment"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8435633.stm

Title: Re: DG defends top salaries
Post by Administrator on Dec 31^st, 2009, 2:14pm

BBC director general Mark Thompson thrown by PD James's detective work.

He has faced down his organisation's fiercest interrogators, including John Humphrys and Jeremy Paxman, but BBC director general Mark Thompson finally met his match today when he was grilled by the 89-year-old crime writer PD James.
Baroness James, a former governor of the BBC, had Thompson firmly on the back foot when she interviewed him as one of the guest editors of BBC Radio 4's Today.
She was scathing about the large salaries being paid to BBC executives, programmes such as Dog Borstal and Britain's Most Embarrassing Pets, and the controversial decision to drop Arlene Phillips as a judge from Strictly Come Dancing, which she said could "only be a kind of ageism".
The BBC, said James, was like a "large and unwieldy ship … with a crew that was somewhat discontented and a little mutinous, the ship sinking close to the Plimsoll line and the customers feeling they have paid too much for their journey and not quite sure where they are going or who is the captain".
The director general defended the six-figure pay packets of some of the corporation's top management, after figures released last month showed that 37 BBC executives – not including on-air talent – earned more than the Prime Minister's salary of £198,000, with more than 300 paid over £100,000. James said the "extraordinarily large salaries" were "very difficult to justify".
Thompson said most of the BBC's highest earners could make more in the commercial sector. "I think most people would accept that if we want to have the best people working for the BBC, delivering the best programmes and best services... the BBC has to bear to some extent in mind the external market," he said.
"The controller of BBC1 is going to be spending about £1bn a year on television programmes for that channel. We really want to make sure we have got the best person doing that job.
"The current controller of BBC1 was working for a commercial broadcaster and we got her to come back. She will – like most of the people on that list – get less from the BBC than they were earning or could earn otherwise. They have to take a pay cut. We are still absolutely losing key staff to commercial broadcasters who are still paying top dollar."
James said some BBC programmes were indistinguishable from those being provided by its commercial rivals. Asked by Thompson to provide examples – "You need to give me a couple of shockers I can respond to" – she cited Britain's Most Embarrassing Pets, Britain's Tallest Man, Britain's Worst Teeth, Dog Borstal, and Help Me Anthea I'm Infested, presented by Anthea Turner.
"I missed Dog Borstal, I don't know whether you managed to catch it," joked Thompson. "It sounds potentially rather interesting."
Thompson denied the decision to drop 66-year-old Phillips from Strictly Come Dancing had been motivated by her age. But he accepted that the BBC had to do more to combat ageism in its choice of presenters and more accurately reflect the age make-up of the population. "I don't believe the decision taken around Arlene Phillips was ageism. But in so far as from time to time people make decisions on the basis of age, they really shouldn't."
When he pointed out that Phillips would return in a new dance programme on the BBC in the new year, James told him: "That was probably a response to the outrage when she went [from Strictly Come Dancing]."
James also took the director general to task on BBC bureaucracy. "You have a director of marketing, communications and audiences who gets over £300,000, then there is a director of communications. Well, I thought that's what the previous director was doing, and he gets £225,000. One wonders what actually is going on here?"
Today programme guest editor – and former BBC governor – gives corporation's top manager a thorough grilling.

Thompson admitted bureaucracy was a "real issue" at the BBC, saying: "It is a many headed hydra. You cut off one head and two more appear. So let's be honest about the fact it's a real issue. One of the things we are looking at is whether we can simply make a fully accountable commitment to how much of the licence fee we actually spend on content."
Thompson said the BBC had tried over the past five years to get its spending on overheads down.
But he insisted that the 17-fold ratio between his own £834,000 package and average BBC pay was far smaller than in most FTSE-listed private companies, where top bosses could earn 100 or more times as much as average staff members. "It really is a privilege (to work at the BBC) and everyone here in the senior echelons should accept that there will be a very big discount, they will get paid much less than they could earn outside the BBC," he said.
James, one of six guest editors in what has become an end of year tradition for Today, was made a life peer in 1991 and sits on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords. She has written more than 20 books, many of which feature her most famous creation, detective Adam Dalgliesh, and was a governor of the BBC between 1988 and 1993.
Today presenter Evan Davis was clearly impressed. "She shouldn't be guest editing, she should be permanently presenting the programme," he said. "Very interesting indeed."

By:- John Plunkett

Source:-
Media Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/31/bbc-mark-thompson-pd-james

Title: Re: DG defends top salaries
Post by Administrator on Dec 31^st, 2009, 3:35pm

BBC's Thompson defends top salaries
BBC director general Mark Thompson has defended the salaries paid to the corporation's top managers by saying that they could earn much more in the private sector.
Thompson was appearing on a special guest edition of BBC Radio 4's Today programme edited by author PD James.
During the interview, the writer questioned whether the BBC's top 37 managers should all be allowed to earn more than the prime minister.
The director general's salary for 2008/9 was £834,000, over four times higher than Gordon Brown's pay packet of £197,689. Last month, the BBC also published expense data for all its top managers, including Thompson's claim of £647.50 for a two-night stay at the famed Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.
In response, Thompson stressed that despite the high levels of pay, the BBC was still losing its key talent to the commercial market where they could earn more money.
Lady James, a former BBC governor, also expressed her belief that the BBC had lost its way. She said that while some BBC programming was of a high quality, other material was more tenuous in its value as public service broadcasting.
The novelist asked Thompson how he could justify the "extraordinarily large" salaries paid to top BBC management, when there was significant concern about it among some licence fee payers.
Thompson responded by saying that the BBC faces strong competition from commercial operators to secure the top talent who can deliver the best programmes and services.
He said that controller of BBC One Jay Hunt, who oversees a programming budget of around £1bn, took a pay cut when she joined the corporation. Most other managers, he added, also receive less than their equivalent commercial market rates.
In October, the BBC Trust backed Thompson's plans to cull over 100 senior BBC managers and also trim top executive pay by 25% over the next three and a half years.

By Andrew Laughlin, Technology Reporter

Source:-
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/broadcasting/news/a193266/bbcs-thompson-defends-top-salaries.html

Title: Re: DG defends top salaries
Post by Administrator on Dec 31^st, 2009, 11:55pm

BBC pay, bureaucracy and ageism: PD James speaks for the nation

If you did not hear the interview conducted by PD James with BBC director general Mark Thompson on the Today programme today then I suggest you set aside 15 minutes or so to do so.

Reading the BBC news website’s account of this spectacular skewering you could be forgiven for believing that Mr Thompson gave a stout defence of the Corporation’s inflated salaries, oversized bureaucracy, patronising ageism and appalling reality TV shows. In fact, Thompson gave a faltering, stumbling performance, unable to answer in any convincing way the points that Lady James put to him, especially when she asked him to justify the huge salaries being paid to BBC executives. Thompson must have said “you know” more times than a footballer, and sounded even more inarticulate.
PD James was a governor of the BBC until the early 1990s; she was born three years before the foundation of the BBC in 1923. Like many of us she loves old Auntie, but wonders how and why it has so badly lost its way. She wanted to put the boss on the spot to answer the questions so many of us had been dying to ask but would never get the chance. Not even the redoubtable John Humphrys would have dared to pin the DG to the wall in this way, assuming he would ever have got the opportunity. Lady James voiced incredulity at Thompson’s insistence that it was necessary to pay a middle ranking executive £400,000 because they would go somewhere else. “Where?” she asked. “To ITV? They are in a desperate stake and if they are paid as much as you are it is no wonder they are in a desperate state.”
PD James is nearly 90 but sounded as sharp as a tack; Thompson might have thought he was going to get a nice comfortable ride. You knew when he started calling her Phyllis that he had lost it. There will have been some waste-paper baskets kicked around the room of the DG’s office afterwards, and probably the backsides of the executive who had the bright – and courageous – idea to invite guest editors on to Today.
Or maybe he thinks he put up a good show.

By:-
Philip Johnston
(Philip Johnston has been with the Daily Telegraph for 20 years. He is currently assistant editor and leader writer and was previously home affairs editor and chief political correspondent).

Source:-

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/philipjohnston/100021010/bbc-pay-bureaucracy-and-ageism-p-d-james-speaks-for-the-nation/