Well done to Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc for refusing to sell out (Bake Off presenters ‘refuse to go with the dough’, 14 September). “The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy,” as they said, and produced a series that has all the ingredients of Britain at its best: humour, kindness and quality. Now it is to be sold to Channel 4, where viewers will have to endure a dumbed-down version and inane adverts – if we continue to watch it. What next? Strictly Come Dancing, the Proms, David Attenborough, Antiques Roadshow? We must protect the BBC and its licence fee. I hope that Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood follow Sue and Mel’s lead and also refuse to “go with the dough”.
Pauline Hodson
Oxford
• The government will surely not be surprised to find that professionals at the peak of their careers are paid more than £150,000 (BBC forced to reveal salaries of star names, 15 September). Another area of interest might be production costs. Why did the BBC send four stars and crew to California to present Big Blue Live, when one would have done? Why does Brian Cox travel halfway round the world for a two-minute clip? Perhaps each programme should show its production cost after the credits. That would help us decide if we are getting value for money.
Michael Watkinson
Coventry
• Your story on BBC salary transparency noted the corporation’s concerns that the government proposals might become a poacher’s charter. The evidence this week from the Great British Breakout is to the contrary. There are a few organisations around the world whose prestige, corporate culture and values help their employees resist lucrative offers from less-celebrated competitors.
My Indian students often explained to me how for them a life-long career with Tata was highly prized, regardless of relatively modest remuneration. The same was certainly true for the BBC. Of course, times and corporate fortunes change.
Tudor Rickards
Woodford, Greater Manchester
• If the BBC is losing Bake Off for want of an extra £10m, why don’t we just have a quick whip-round among the 10 million loyal viewers who watched the series start this year? If we each chuck in a quid, that would see it safe back where it belongs, hopefully complete with Mel ’n’ Sue ’n’ Mary ’n’ Paul … raising enough and keeping the right mix.
Alexandra Shepherd
Aberdeen
• Assume Match of the Day has similar cultural value to Bake Off. If the BBC paid £204m in 2015 for three years of MOTD, with less than half as many viewers (Opinion, 14 September), the coalition government had good reason to reduce its budget. Watching ad-heavy football highlights on ITV would have been a price worth paying for £204m of original BBC programmes. The government was set on downsizing the BBC with or without MOTD.
Joseph Palley
Richmond, Surrey
• Charlotte Higgins’ otherwise excellent article (The loss of Bake Off is a blow, but the BBC will rise again, 14 September) misses perhaps the most significant factor in the loss of the programme by the BBC. Love Productions, owned by Sky, falls under the ultimate control of Rupert Murdoch, a man avowed to the hobbling of the BBC as a provider of quality popular programming.
Keith Wilshere
Beckington, Somerset
• The government’s order to the BBC to publish details of all salaries above £150,000 is clearly designed to give the private TV companies a competitive advantage. But why are so many BBC employees being paid enormous salaries anyway? Are these people so supremely talented that they warrant earning five or six times the average wage?
The BBC has been very good at uncovering new talent via open competitions: why not have a few programmes to showcase new talent in presenting journalism? They could bring a fresh and invigorating approach to at least some of these so-called top jobs, as well as releasing money needed for programmes,
Mike Scott
West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire
• Only four months ago the BBC was under attack from the then culture secretary John Whittingdale, who was using the corporation’s charter renewal to lean on them for making too many programmes that were popular. Disguised as a concern about “distinctiveness”, popular BBC programmes like the Voice, Strictly Come Dancing and the Great British Bake Off were not considered to be good value for the public’s TV licence fee. But despite government interference and criticism, cuts, reallocation of its funds to pay for the over-75s’ licence fee, the BBC continues to use public money make high-quality radio and television programmes that are distinctively a part of our shared national culture. Although Whittingdale rowed back from the more extreme predictions of his white paper there is no question that the BBC has very few friends in government or among the free-market ideologues that would prefer it to leave popular programmes to profit-making companies.
Love Productions, in which Sky owns a majority stake, may be popping the champagne corks after their £25m deal, but they may find that Bake Off’s popularity will not transfer to Channel 4 because there will be little love for them from a nation who see it as quintessentially British and very BBC.
Huren Marsh
London
• The BBC may have inadvertently stumbled across the perfect replacement to the Great British Bake Off. The corporation should televise evening cricket matches and, between innings, members of the public can bring homemade cakes for Test Match Special’s Aggers, Blowers and Tuffers to sample and judge. The perfect amalgam of two great British traditions (Eight-city T20 tournament gets county go-ahead, 15 September).
Toby Wood
Peterborough
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