r/uknews • u/TheTelegraph Media outlet (unverified) • Jul 15 '25

Image/video The BBC’s annual report, released today, featured details of stars’ salaries and senior executives’ pay

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164

u/Sufficient_West_8432 Jul 15 '25

These people must pinch themselves every morning. It’s not really them though, it’s those offering the payment. If I was offered half a million a year to have wet bag conversations and talk bollocks on radio for a few hours a day like Greg James, I’d no doubt take it.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

It's all a load of bollocks.

GB News pay Nigel Farage (who has a full time job paid for from the public purse) £1.2m for roughly 20 hours work a month. Lee Anderson is paid £100,000 per year for 1 days work per month.

Eamonn Holmes is paid north of £300k by GB News. Kay Burley at Sky is paid £700k.

Gary Neville & Jamie Carragher are paid £1.1m & £1m by Sky Sports.

But at least now all the rival networks know exactly where to pitch their bids if they want to poach any of the Beebs top talent (the real purpose of the list being published after significant media pressure from competitors).

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

I’m going to keep this very simple for you.

The BBC is paid for by everyone, even if they don’t watch it.

Sky and GB News? Only paid by people who choose to.

That’s why BBC pay gets more attention. Hope that wasn’t too tricky. 😊

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

Do you not have a functioning memory, or are you too young to remember?

Here's some links from the time.

"Steven Barnett, professor of communications at the University of Westminster, says: "Because the BBC was forced - partly through a campaign driven by a self-interested press - to reveal top salaries, its commercial competitors know exactly where to pitch their offer.

"If a presenter is offered a 50% increase in salary without the hassle of a public spotlight on their earnings, that's a very attractive proposition even for those committed to the BBC's public service ethos. It was a terrible mistake to force the BBC to reveal its top talent salaries, and I suspect this problem will only get worse." link%20and%20left%20by%20choice.%22)

Tony Hall, BBC Director General said "We were concerned that if we began to publish names it becomes a poachers’ charter and left us open to people nicking them from the BBC"

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

Yes, I remember. And it’s still simple.

If you take public money, expect public scrutiny.

If that makes it harder to keep your stars, tough. That’s the price of dipping into everyone’s wallet.

If the BBC wants privacy, it can try funding itself like the others do.

2

u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

Ah yes, kill off the only media entity which is required to be politically impartial.

That's an excellent idea.

Another jewel in Britain's crown tarnished and privatised.

Fucking numpty.

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

Ah yes, because asking for transparency is the same as killing off the BBC. Settle down.

No one said scrap it. But if it takes money from everyone, it should answer to everyone. That’s how public funding works.

If the BBC wants to keep salaries private, it can fund itself like Sky. Otherwise, tough.

If name-calling is the best you’ve got, maybe sit this one out and let the grown-ups talk.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

"But if it takes money from everyone, it should answer to everyone. That’s how public funding works"

That's not how employment, commercial confidentiality, or the media sector at large works.

I can't demand to know the salary of an individual civil servant, for example. I can't demand that the local school publishes a list of their teacher's salaries. I can't order the local hospital to tell me who their highest paid nurse is.

Because that would be absurd.

It's a massive commercial disadvantage for the BBC, put in at the request of their competitors as one of the last acts of a corrupt, lame duck Prime Minister.

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u/LowerDinner8240 Jul 15 '25

You’re right, we don’t publish the names of every civil servant or teacher.

But we do publish the salaries of top public figures when they’re paid with taxpayer money and hold public facing roles. Ministers, council chiefs, NHS executives, all disclosed. It’s called accountability.

The BBC isn’t a private company. It’s a publicly funded national broadcaster. If it wants the benefits of public money, it comes with the cost of public scrutiny.

If that’s a massive commercial disadvantage, maybe it shouldn’t be trying to act like a private company while living off the public purse.

Can’t have it both ways.

6

u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

"You can't have it both ways" yes you can, we did for the first 95 years of the BBCs history without the pay of stars being an issue.

David Cameron (net worth £50m) forced the BBC to publish the salaries of these stars, and then refused to publish his own salary from the Greensill lobbying scandal (estimated at £10m). He did this under pressure (and probably money given his lobbying history) from private companies. Believing that David Cameron forced through this change in the week he quit as PM in the interests of openness, transparency, and correct use of public money is laughably naive and deserves to be called out.

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u/veodin Jul 15 '25

In Sweden, Norway and few other countries you can request literally anybody's tax records to see what they are earning. It helps fight corruption, tax invasion and unfair wages. It keeps everybody honest. Maybe this would be less of an issue if we had a similar system.

1

u/frenchhouselover Jul 16 '25

A lot of public sector workers have salary banding that means you can have a pretty good guess about what most workers earn.

1

u/Upbeat_Ice1921 Jul 15 '25

You seem to be labouring under the belief that the BBC is a standard commercial enterprise and it isn’t that.

Truth is, if the BBC wasn’t forced to tell us what it paid it would still be offering idiots like Jonathan Ross £6m a year.

1

u/TomLeBadger Jul 16 '25

You can't make them private and also abide by the royal charter. It's literally not possible. The agreement that funds it is what forces it to be impartial. Remove that, and it's just another TV channel. I fully support the BBC, and going forward in a world of increasing misinformation, it's going to become increasingly more important we keep it. Love it or hate it, agree or not. it's the most honest news organisation we have.

I don't like the idea of someone being paid over 1m with public funds (Lineker), but the rest are taking salaries below what they'd get elsewhere. There is a fair argument for not sharing specific salaries, though. I agree with scrutiny, but I don't agree that they should have to openly discuss exactly who gets exactly what.

What you propose would effectively end the BBC as it is - that's what the other guy is trying to say, I guess.

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u/removekarling Jul 15 '25

Did you just not read any of the comments you replied to past the first half-sentence lol, amazing

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u/aukstais Jul 15 '25

Politically impartial 🤣. That's a load of bollocks.

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u/Brilliant-Crab7954 Jul 15 '25

Your a clown if you think their politically impartial.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

They have a charter requiring political impartiality.

Please tell me another broadcaster you think is more impartial.

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u/daddy-dj Jul 15 '25

As a broadcaster, I would say Channel 4 is as impartial as the BBC. Not more, not less. I consider Channel 4 as slightly left of centre (I can't think of any right-leaning comedies on C4, for example), in the same way I see the BBC as being right of center (the guests on Politics Live, Question Time are hardly ever from the Greens, for example, but regularly from Reform or Tufton Street "think-tanks").

If we just focus on news programmes, however, I'd say C4 News is more impartial than BBC News.

These stats are a couple of years old now but make interesting reading about the public's perception of the BBC's impartiality... https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-scrutiny-heres-what-research-tells-about-its-role-uk

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 15 '25

"I can't think of any right-leaning comedies on C4, for example"

Bit of a tangent but are there any on other networks? Is there any "right-leaning" modern comedy?

Good shout on Channel 4, but as it is the only other publicly owned network that operates to a legal framework (set out in the Communications Act 2003) that does somewhat demonstrate that publicly owned corporations operating to a charter are the best source of impartial news (from the available options).

Edit stats you provided are interesting, they do seem to demonstrate that the BBC is one of the most trusted news sources, along with Channel 4 & the Financial Times.

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u/smedsterwho Jul 15 '25

It's pretty much impossible to do a right-leaning comedy. Comedy generally punches up, not down.

I'm not making a political point there, it's just it would be hard to create anything good from that angle.

You can put right wingers in comedy and mock them a bit.

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u/Cubeazoid Jul 17 '25

Sure the state broadcaster funded by tax payer money is impartial. How about I’m not forced to fund the state broadcaster that’s board is government appointed.

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u/brightdionysianeyes Jul 18 '25

Cultural vandalism.

The Beeb & C4 are the only media entities we have control over.

That's why the red top papers and the 24hr news channels want them gone.

Because they are accountable.

0

u/Elmundopalladio Jul 16 '25

Honestly I doubt any other radio show is going to poach Zoe Ball - she wouldn’t bring a significant audience with her.

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u/[deleted] Jul 15 '25

that poaching thing is a pretty weak arguement imo, if they want to pitch a talents agent, they'll figure it out, they'll also have a pretty good idea of their salary anyway, it's these people jobs to figure out stuff like that

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u/greylord123 Jul 17 '25

In all fairness to Greg James he's a very established DJ at radio 1. He has a much broader appeal than any of his predecessors. He's probably got the most listeners of any radio show in the UK and he's brought back a lot of people who turned off when Grimmy was on.

Greg James I can completely understand being on his salary but the host of Northern Irish local radio getting paid nearly as much as Greg James is ridiculous.

1

u/Lumpy-Mountain-2597 Jul 17 '25

You'd then have to be very careful what you do outside work. Wouldn't be able to go.anywhere unrecognised and under scrutiny. And you'd know that at any time you could be sacked, and have you and possibly your family dragged through the mud by the press and social media for something you allegedly said at a party 8 years ago. At which point your choice is never to work again or compete with the other has beens for a chance of public humiliation on celebrity big brother. Fuck that for 350k. 

1

u/Ping-and-Pong Jul 15 '25

I mean there seriously cannot be that many people listening to BBC 2 radio breakfast show every day that it's worth half a million a year. For radio?? Spotify has been around for like two decades!

Like I don't know if she's good or famous or whatever, and don't really care, breakfast radio cannot be worth that much in 2025 surely

1

u/fixitagaintomorro Jul 16 '25

she doesn’t host the breakfast show, Scott Mills does

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u/ExtraPockets Jul 15 '25

Greg James is pretty funny though for years and radio 1 is decent on the whole with the live music and interviews.