BBC TV chief: not in licence fee payers' interest to reveal stars' pay
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Version 0 of 1. The BBC’s TV chief has said it is not in the interests of licence fee payers to reveal the salaries of its highest-paid stars. Charlotte Moore, who was put in charge of the whole of the BBC’s £1bn-plus TV budget in January and has since also over responsibility for sport, said that plans to make the corporation reveal the salaries of all talent earning more than £450,000 would force up the BBC’s wage bill. “We know our audience expect us to have the best talent. We also know we can’t pay as much as other broadcasters, and of course we don’t pay as much as other other broadcasters,” she told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. “I genuinely think that it’s not in the interests of licence fee payers that we do that. I think it will only drive talent fees up. “We are already very transparent about a lot of the BBC. I think talent fees are a really difficult one. The outcome of it may well will be that talent fees will go up, I think if everyone knows what everyone is paid they will say I want to be be paid that as well.” The government’s white paper on the next BBC charter starting in 2017 proposes that all stars earning more than £450,000, thought to include the likes of Gary Lineker, Chris Evans and Graham Norton, should be made public.The Commons culture, media and sport select committee recommended last month that the threshold should be set lower, at £138,000.The BBC already reveals the salaries of management earring more than £150,000, but director general Tony Hall has previously described the move as a “poachers’ charter” that would make it easy for commercial rivals to hire stars away from the BBC and drive up the wage bill.Moore added that there could be problems in areas such as shows where stars are paid by a production company.“Regulating that is not always easy,” she said. “It’s not always up to the BBC how much we pay someone.”Moore also said that she was trying to get a more diverse range of faces on the BBC, including using more experts from different backgrounds and giving opportunities to older women such as Anne Robinson and Angela Rippon, whom the BBC has been previously accused of sidelining. Asked whether she thought social class was as important as other forms of diversity, Moore agreed, saying the BBC and society as a whole had to reflect the UK population more effectively both on- and off-screen. |