The BBC is finally being punished!

[longfingernails]

Apparently there is a great plan to shift the cost of free TV licenses from the taxpayer to the BBC - with no increase in the license fee to compensate!

That amounts to about a 20% cut in the BBC budget. I am over the moon at this news.

It's incredibly progressive too! It shifts the burden from poor taxpayers to overpaid BBC staff, who will probably have to take a 25% pay cut! I am sure the newsreader who revealed she was paid £92k will be distraught. I can't even begin to imagine how much luvvies like Robert Peston and Andrew Marr are paid.

Maybe the next time the BBC says that "public spending cuts take money out of the economy" on the news, it might like to reflect on why Tories are so cock-a-hoop tonight.

They are in the middle of a "Cuts watch" series of programmes, I understand. Funnily enough, they never seemed to get round to a "Deficit watch" or "Tax watch" series during the Labour years. Strange, really - I wonder why?

You should live in the US for a while and see what passes for 'news' organisations there. And you would gasp at the salaries of newseraders/anchor personalities. You would appreciate the Beeb a lot more if you saw the dreck that passes as news elsewhere. (Or maybe not, given the general drift of your comments.)

Privately owned news organisations add exactly nothing to the common good, to public discourse, or to democracy as a whole.

No matter what it costs, the BBC is fabulous value for money.

The idea that public spending cuts take money out of the economy sounds like common sense to me -- it's an idea that might bear discussion in the current climate; the idea that a government should attempt to muzzle or control any sort of news outlet by reducing its financing sounds like a false economy at the very least, and a blow to public discussion at the worst. What sort of government seeks to reduce the amount of serious attention to policy? What do the Tories see emerging in the place of the BBC if its operations are curtailed to any great extent? Another Murdoch-controlled 'news business'?

(A 92K salary is chump change btw, in the world of broadcast news in the US A newsreader saga in Chicago is referenced here. Note mention of ratings of news broadcasts. A sad phenomenon indeed is a ratings period for local TV news in the US.)

mathanxiety The BBC is shamelessly biased towards the left. They are the broadcasting arm of the Guardian.

The TV tax is forced on us if we so much as view any single broadcast channel, and we have to pay for the Labour propoganda machine whether we want to or not.

BBC staff shouldn't be paid in comparison to American presenters, or even British presenters on commercial channels. They are in public service broadcasting and the licence fee payer has no choice but to pay for them. There are plenty of people who would be perfectly prepared to read an autocue for a lot less than £92k.

longfingernails have you listened to shows like radio 5 live breakfast and various phone ins on that station (to take an example)? It's like a poor man's Fox News.

You do have a choice - don't get a tv.

You do realise most BBC employees are just paid a normal wage and don't appear on your TV?

Igglybuff You mean the likes of Nicky Campbell and Victoria Derbyshire? You have to be joking.

nobiggy If I ran the BBC, I would stagger the pay cuts. Those on more than £200k (most of the big-name reporters and interviewers, the thankfully departed Jonathan Ross, most of the management) could take at least a 50% pay cut. Those between £50k and £200k can take a 25% pay cut. £21k could be the threshold for having salaries frozen for two years, just like public sector workers. Those under £21k can have an inflationary increase.

You are nasty and spiteful.

Being delighted that ordinary working people (the vast, vast amount of BBC employees) might lose so much of their salary that they will be in severe financial difficulty is truly vile.

Your obvious stupidity should make me pity you a little but it doesn't for some reason.

yep these smug threads about

oops wrong thread and pushed post too soon. I'll get me coat!

spidookly I've already explained that I would exempt low-paid employees.

I want big, big pay cuts at the BBC for presenters and management though.

I have absolutely no sympathy with the likes of Michael Crick, Kirsty Wark and all the other champagne socialists on mega £200k+ salaries funded by licence fee payers earning on average about £20k. I'm sure that somehow, they would muddle through. If that makes me nasty and spiteful, then so be it!

I bet Tory boy Nick Robinson gets a tasty salary too. no mention of him in your luvvie list?

Are you Mark Thompson posting as a demented bitter Tory?

Cuts of that size would mean job losses and service cuts, not a few wealthy presenters losing a few quid.

You are the ugly face of cuts enthusiasm - you want cuts for the sake of it, you relish damaging important, successful British organisations, and you don't care about the effect on other people or the wider economy.

I think it's absolutely laughable to talk about the BBC as being the broadcasting arm of the Guardian.

I think you sound terribly spiteful.

Guardian supported Lib Dems in the election didn't they?

Yes the Guardian supported Nick Clegg "enthusiastically".

The bitching aside, LFN makes a good point about the level of the pay of some at the BBC.

They are a public sector organisation as we pay for them, and should therefore at least restrain pay. OK, their salaries may not be as much as in private sector broadcasting, but they have the kudos of working for the Beeb.

It's also the packages behind the salary - rents abroad and school fees for the foreign correspondents, and making good the damage caused when they move out.

The point about the cuts taking money out of the economy, well yes, but also if we didn't cut, then the interest bill on the monies UK PLC borrows would balloon and cost more, so the money would still be taken out of the economy to repay the interest on the debt anyway.

I don't know what they did minutes after the election result. I don't read it "enthusiastically", so I don't know. But it wouldn't surprise me if they did a complete volte-face. They have some very clever people on the Guardian.

I dont understand this post. Glory in starving the organisation that produces the world service, stunning documentaries like the history of the world in 100 objects or the nature documentaries of funding. What programmes do you all watch/listen to? Is Sky enough to satisfy you????/

Why do we need the BBC any more, with its compulsory licence fee? IT should be phased out completely over the next 10 years and can close parts and be allowed advertisements, like all the other channels.

At the moment, the BBC is a tax on the poor to fund lifestyles more reminiscent of the worst excesses of the private sector (which at least are paid for by shareholders).

Maybe, we need a tiny "BBC Lite" to do genuine public service broadcasting.

MrsDennis,

If enough people want highbrow programming, they can surely afford to fund it? It is no good producing programmes which only the literati are interested in and expecting every single struggling person to contribute to their enjoyment.

If Horizon, the best of the nature documentaries etc were moved onto a paid for channel, I would pay for it.

Would cutting their star presenters' salaries by 25% really affect their nature documentaries? I think the BBC did a study called "Putting Quality First" and they will be cutting many of their websites etc. Seems like they have identified scope for cuts.

Longfingernails, you are clearly suffering from paranoid delusions if you think that the BBC reports 'public spending cuts take money out of the economy' as opposed to reporting the views of those (economists, thinktanks, former members of the Bank of England interest rate committee) who have raised concerns about this.

Do you understand the difference between reporting and campaigning?

There is an arguement to be had about the licence fee, proper competition in the broadcast market, whether massive expenditure on the BBC website is a proper use of licence payer money, BBC World, etc etc, but I think you'd need to lie down first.

Larrygrylls - you shouldn't be blase about private sector waste 'at least' being paid for by shareholders. If you have a pension, that's you. Shareholders not holding the banking and fund management industries to account is one of the reasons we are in the state we are in.

The BBC is one if the most well-respected media brands in the world.

It is the envy of other countries and supported by the majority of the British public.

One of Britain's few remaining successful industries is media production and the BBC plays a pivotal supporting role.

Getting rid of it would be an act of cultural vandalism and ideological hooliganism.

Matsikula,

Could not agree with you more about private sector wastage and pensions. I have long held the belief that only end shareholders should be allowed to "vote their shares".

Spidookly,

Easy to produce a well respected brand with the public's money. It is a throw back to the centralist control of Soviet Russia. I enjoy books by Ishiguro and Umberto Eco. Does that mean the government should have a book tax to produce quality literature? Or maybe produce a newspaper with public money, headhunting the best reporters from the private sector?

But who wants to get rid of it? Don't they just want it to focus on quality public broadcasting and to reduce the size of salaries where hundreds are paid more than the Prime Minister who is in charge of running the entire country? Should the BBC really be producing all of these cookery programmes and house decoration programmes and Strictly Come Dancing etc. Couldn't some of that be left to the commercial broadcasters? Isn't there a debate to be had about what the role of the BBC should really be?