Sarah Modlock

The BBC - how it wastes our millions

Much has happened at the BBC since I last wrote about it. Back in March, you were not slow in coming forward to say what you think of the way the organisation is run and how you resent the licence fee.
Since then I have been keeping a file of depressing stories and now - as the corporation faces the possibility of a serious shake-up - seems like the ideal time to air them. For the record, I do read all the papers and so the ones quoted here are not viewed in isolation. I'm sorry it all makes such heavy reading but I thought it was interesting to see a big part of the picture.

Just to recap, each licence fee payer coughs up £139.50 a year. The fee brought in £3.4billion last year. This buys us eight TV channels, five radio stations, regional programming, and a website.
Setting Ross and Brand aside, forgetting the repeats and editorial credibility issues for a moment, there is plenty to show that enough is enough and the licence fee situation should be reviewed:

March: Desperate BBC sports chiefs bid £400million to land the rights to broadcast Champions League games. They are so determined that presenters such as Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen are said to have been told that the deal will be done at all costs, according to reports in the Daily Mail. The timing of such an enormous bid is also controversial with the corporation shedding up to 1,800 jobs and cutting budgets on news and current affairs programmes. ITV paid £120million for its three-year deal for the elite competition but UEFA would expect the BBC to make up the revenue lost by not showing adverts for sponsors such as Ford and MasterCard, which get repeated exposure as official sponsors on the ITV coverage. The BBC refused to comment on the issue and any potential bid price.
Also...Figures obtained by the Sunday Express reveal that the BBC's taxi bill in 2007 was an incredible £5.4million. Much of this was spent ferrying guests to and from studios, despite all the main studios being in walking distance of main public transport links. A spokesman said "Providing a suitable mode of transport is essential when attracting the calibre of guest that our audience expects". Meanwhile Sky TV has cut back its taxi costs by investing in a fleet of environmentally-friendly cars.

April: Extraordinary details of the expense account of BBC Creative Director Alan Yentob are revealed in documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday. The controversial executive is awarded thousands of pounds of licence-fee payers' money each year for a range of items including "dry cleaning", "evening dress" and "accessing email while on location". Mr Yentob, who can expect a gold-plated £2.5m BBC pension has a basic salary of more than £300,000 a year. He also claimed £120 for a cake to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the BBC drama Pride And Prejudice, £11 on a Cat Stevens CD for "research" and £25 for repairing the DVD player in his BBC car. In total, the BBC which recently sacked 2,000 staff due to budget cuts paid him £27,300 over the past three years including £16,830 for "entertainment", which included meals with celebrities and dinners for BBC staff. He filed £166 for theatre tickets as he was "thinking of doing the play for TV", £285 on a "present" for "finalising a contract with talent", £40 for dry cleaning and £20 for the email access on location. But he's taking care of the pennies as well as the pounds - he received 24p for a phone call, 67p for a "prop" used in "filming a sequence for Imagine" and £1.69 for a single cab journey.

May: The Times reports that the BBC is £36 million over budget running its family of websites in the past year. The site had a budget of £74.2 million but spent £110 million The budget overspill, uncovered by the BBC Trust, the corporation’s regulator, was described by that body as “a serious breach” that stems from “a lack of financial accountability” in the way that BBC websites are run. BBC-owned websites are the most popular British-owned destinations on the internet – bbc.co.uk is the third-most-visited site in Britain, after Google and msn, attracting 16.6 million Britons monthly, according to figures from Nielsen Research.

July: 10 senior executives get huge pay rises following a year of problems. The Sun reports that the total wage bill for top execs rose by 8% - double that of increases for other staff. Pay for Director of Vision Jana Bennett increased by £103,000 to £536,000. She was also given a £23,000 bonus. She was the boss at the centre of the scandal involving the documentary on the Queen, which was edited and promoted to make it appear as if she stormed out of an interview. She was also in charge when the BBC admitted 'serious lapses' involving the faked Blue Peter quiz winner. That episode cost the BBC a£50,000 fine. Other pay increases: Director General Mark Thompson up from £788,000 to £816,000. No bonus. His deputy Mark Byford up from £437,000 to £513,000 with a £41,000 bonus. BBC Worldwide Chief John Smith up £20,000 to £486,000 plus a £88,000 bonus. Ashley Highfield, the Future Media Director saw pay go up from £359,000 to £466,000 with a £34,000 bonus. Five others are on more than £400,000 a year and received bonuses of between £17,000 and £33,000. This is interesting to compare with the £188,848 salary of the Prime Minister - can that be right?

August: The BBC wastes £100,000 on a controversial documentary about Princess Diana that will never be seen, says the Mail on Sunday. Diana, In Her Own Words included extracts from video tapes of the Princess recorded by her speech coach, Peter Settelen but the BBC has decided not to show it.

September: TV presenter and producer Noel Edmunds announces he refuses to pay the TV licence fee in protest because the BBC is so threatening in its adverts promising to catch fee evaders. He accuses the BBC of wanting to 'badger, hector and threaten' people over the fee and is prepared to face the consequences - a £1,000 fine - of not having a licence to make a stand. No news yet as to whether they have caught up with him.

This week: The News of the World highlights the BBC staff wage bill. In addition to those I have mention above, 36 people earn more than £200,000. In total the Beeb wage bill for just 50 bosses is £14.3million. The paper points out that for the same money we could get 677 nurses, 695 teachers, 540 firemen or 596 policemen.
Also... John Prescott is reportedly paid £40,000 to appear in two (awful) programmes about the class system.
As Libby Purves said in the Times last week, the BBC needs to decide whether it is a rival or a resource. In the same newspaper, however. Roger Boyes makes the point that the BBC outshines eurotrash TV and should be valued for that. But as Trevor Kavanagh in the Sun says: "Thanks to the licence fee - a tax by any other name - the BBC is totally unaccountable.