Rave Up with Arielle Free

[MrDoovdeHaxorz]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18854839

BBC reduces star pay by £9.5m

The BBC has reduced its star pay by £9.5m, spending just over £203m in the last financial year on salaries for its presenters and "talent". The BBC's annual report revealed 16 individuals were paid more than £500,000 in the financial year 2011 - 2012, three fewer than the year before.

Director general Mark Thompson earned £622,000 in the last financial year - down from £779,000 in 2010-11.

He earned 15 times more than the median pay of a BBC employee.

The total combined salaries of the BBC's executive directors fell from £5,714,000 in 2010-11 to £2,560,000, largely due to the number of board members being reduced from 13 to seven.

The annual report also looked at the BBC's productions. Spending on the BBC's TV channels decreased by 37.1m in 2011-12, down to £2,334,900.

But radio spending increased by £1.2m to £640.1m.

Drama output across BBC television fell by 156 hours, although there was a significant increase in drama on BBC radio - up 419 hours.

Entertainment programmes increased by 470 hours, while the same genre also went up on radio by 568 hours.

Factual content on TV increased by 307 hours, while music and arts fell by 90 hours.

Televised sports decreased by 389 hours and there were 602 hours less of sports coverage on BBC radio.

Staff numbers were reduced by 342. There were 470 senior managers in the BBC last year, a reduction of 70.

The BBC's financial officer, Zarin Patel, said the BBC had a strong financial foundation.

The corporation has an underlying surplus of £249m, thanks to changes to the staff's pension scheme, which saved £45m, and the one-off sale of BBC Worldwide's magazines business for £95m.

The BBC has a target of 11% in efficiency savings by 2016 as part of its Delivering Quality First strategy.

A survey for the BBC Trust showed that 56% of UK adults agreed that their household received good value from the licence fee.

The annual reported stated that this figure had remained stable for the last four years "but suggests that there is a need to better explain how the money is being spent".

Interesting figures here. I do think that the BBC is good value, but I still hate that half the F1 is among those cut hours of sport (although on that note, a LOT will have been saved by Martin Brundle -probably the biggest saving, David Croft or Nathalie Pinkham and some of the old BBC backroom staff jump ship to Sky, though there are some of the Web Team such as Sarah Holt who went freelance instead), and all of these cuts are made necessary by the Government and BBC Trust's decisions (such as freezes on licence fee, good for the viewer in one way, but not necessarily in others).

Find a few of the other bits a little hard to believe, Factual Content increasing but there's been talk of closing down BBC4? Hoping that doesn't include those 'documentaries' BBC3 pumps out.

In other news, BBC should have more money saved by the now sadly confirmed sale of Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/16/bbc-sells-television-centre

[R94N]

Shame TV Centre is going. They'll probably stick flats in it as well