Technicality conceals true membership of £150,000 club
Star salaries list does not include those employed by independent companies or BBC Worldwide
THE published table of star salaries contains 96 names, but the real number is likely to be higher as a technicality allows the BBC to mask the true figures.
The Government required the disclosure of “people paid more than £150,000 of licence fee revenue” in the last financial year. But anyone who is paid via an independent production company is exempt from the list, as is anyone paid via the corporation’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.
The list also obscures the full earnings of some BBC stars. Graham Norton’s stated salary of £850,000-£899,999 makes him the third highest-paid star on the list, but covers only his work on Radio 2, Eurovision and the BBC One Saturday night show Let It Shine.
His main entertainment programme, The Graham Norton Show, is made by his own production company, So Tele-
‘You are in a market where presenters are paid at going rates. ITV and Channel 4 pay more than the BBC’
vision, and the money he earns from that is not covered in the BBC report.
Chris Evans’s total salary is believed to be far higher than the £2,220,000£2,249,999 reported, because Top Gear, the motoring show he presented during the period the list covers, is part-funded by BBC Worldwide and the figure topped up by it.
For this reason, Evans’s then Top Gear co-star, the former Friends actor Matt Leblanc, also fails to feature. A BBC spokesman declined to be drawn on the matter.
Independently made shows include Question Time, The Apprentice, University Challenge and Masterchef, meaning the salaries of David Dimbleby, Lord Sugar, Jeremy Paxman, John Torode and Gregg Wallace do not appear in the published accounts.
Instead, the BBC pays an overall sum of money to the programme makers, who decide what proportion of it is paid to the stars.
Lord Sugar defended high salaries in a discussion on social media.
He told the BBC’S second-highest-earner, Gary Lineker over Twitter: “You should not worry. You are in a market where presenters are paid at going rates. ITV [and] Channel 4 pay more than the BBC.” Lineker’s salary of £1,750,000-£1,799,999 covers his presenting roles on the BBC, mainly Match of the Day, which he undertakes in addition to work for rival BT Sport. But it does not include any money paid to Goalhanger Films, the production company he set up and which makes documentaries for broadcasters including the BBC.
Sir David Attenborough’s salary remains unknown as his natural history programmes are funded by BBC Worldwide. Such programmes have such high production budgets that they have to be funded by commercial income.
The list of highest-paid actors is dominated by the casts of Eastenders, Holby City and Casualty. But it is unlikely that they out-earn the Hollywood stars who have graced BBC One dramas in the past year: Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager and Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock. Both were co-produced with independent companies. Aidan Turner, the star of Poldark, is another face of a leading BBC drama whose pay is absent from the list.
The situation will become more opaque in the 2017-18 accounts because the corporation’s in-house production unit, BBC Studios, became an independent commercial entity at the beginning of this tax year.
As a result, programmes it makes – including Strictly Come Dancing, Casualty and A Question of Sport – will be classed as independent productions, and the salaries will not be disclosed. And while Labour said it wanted to see a 20:1 maximum pay ratio between the highest and lowest paid staff, sources said that would not apply to stars employed indirectly.
The figures do include freelance presenters whose money is funnelled via personal service companies. The annual report also detailed the pay of all BBC executives earning more than £150,000 – a list comprising more than 100 names.
The BBC’S total wage bill for 2016-17 rose to £1.018 billion – up from £990million the previous year – and the headcount rose by 28.
Anne Bulford, the deputy directorgeneral, said more people had been recruited to the World Service, which accounted for some of the rise.