BBC Salaries 2018/19 Revealed

The figures released exclude stuff made by BBC Studios, so disregarding Strictly is entirely reasonable.

It does make the whole exercise pointless, however.

Ah, I construed "excluded" as meaning that Strictly didn't count as top of the genre.

BBC produced News, Sport and I think Children's.

Boris Johnson: "The BBC should be coughing up for the TV licences for the over 75s." Huge cheers from the 300 strong audience.
A Tory member asks if the corporation should "sack Gary Lineker?" Johnson replies: "That is above my pay grade." #ToryLeadershipContest

— Christopher Hope📝 (@christopherhope) July 4, 2019

It's his party that cut off paying for them in the first place (and battered the BBC in other ways), which is why they're being scrapped.

It's like a man setting fire to somebody's house and then blaming the homeowners for not having a sprinkler system.

News, Sport and Children's aren't part of BBC Studios and only a small amount of radio is part of BBC Studios. (I think comedy is)

One thing people forget about the presidency is that despite all the amenities the president and their family have to cover personal costs that are unrelated to the job. The cooks will cook dinner for the family as it’s their job but they have to pay for food. If the president travels for campaigning he has to pay the equivalent of a first class air fare ticket, same goes for vacation accommodations (although the secret service will cover extra security covering the houses). I believe the Clintons said when they left the White House they didn’t have much money left and the Obamas were shocked at the food bill.

I imagine the prime minister has to reimburse personal expenses as well.

Anyway back on track.

In today's "The Sun Says" column, they're now comparing Lineker's salary for hosting MoTD from when Jimmy Hill hosted the show in the 70s and 80s . . .

BT do use already though for their Champions League coverage. And if Sky and ITV did want to sign him up they surely would have since the main presenter roles have come up at both in recent times - in 2011 & 2016 for Sky and 2015 for ITV.

I actually don't think most of the salaries are too ridiculous (and for things like radio, people do listen for the talent) but the Lineker does stick out a lot.
People watch the football for the football not because Lineker is hosting. And Mark Chapman does similar, if not more work than Lineker, at a better quality for a fraction of the wage. Lineker does do MOTD and feature heavily during Euros/World Cups on TV but then Mark Chapman does MOTD2 and leads radio coverage of those competitons but also does 5 Live Sport a few times a week, Golf radio coverage, NFL, Rugby League. Wage differentials like that do stick out since the two are doing the same role and there's a big difference in cost.

And as I say people I'm pretty sure viewing figures for things like the Euros aren't dependent on it being Lieneker anchored.

So a politician refuses to comment on something as you’d expect them to do. I’m not sure what the point of posting that is.

They'll all happily slag Lineker off in the front pages (and it's not his salary which has made him an enemy of some quarters of the press) but then report some unknown early-20 something has just signed for a mid-tier Premier League club for £50k a week on the backpage.

The trouble though with publishing the salaries is it's clearly driving salaries up rather than down - people are seeing what other people are getting paid and quite rightly if in a similar role or offered a similar role they expect to get the same level of pay.

Without publishing these figures the BBC could probably save £1m-£1.25m a year by offering the top job to the brilliant Mark Chapman and letting Lineker earn his cash elsewhere, but now anybody replacing him on Match of the Day is going to expect a £1m+ salary to start with.