At last, a price comparison more wantonly imbecilic than discussing how many nurses a Premier League footballer’s commercial contract would have bought. It is the confected outrage that someone or other is paid “more than the prime minister’s salary”.
Latest to deploy it is Karen Bradley, who has risen without trace to become secretary of state for culture, media and sport. Karen has taken to the pages of the Daily Telegraph to reveal that the government is today forcing the BBC to publish the salaries of all on-screen talent earning more than £150,000.
Though Karen was appointed by Theresa May, the obsession with prime ministerial comparisons took hold particularly under the competitively priced premiership of David Cameron, whose original plan it was to force the Beeb to disclose talent paid more than £450,000. That today’s threshold is so much lower suggests the problem persists more virulently than ever. Anyway, let’s see it in action. “Latest data shows that 109 stars currently earn more than that figure,” notes Karen, “which is just above the prime minister’s salary.”
On the one hand, Karen is to be congratulated for catching the popular mood, which we all know has in recent years been a sense that television isn’t going through a golden age and that politicians are tireless and highly valued public servants who really ought to be given much more of our money. On the other hand, what on earth has the prime minister’s salary got to do with the price of rice, let alone the price of Laura Kuenssberg?
Still, if the government really wants to get into a comparison, I’d say bring it on. Let me put it like this: I’m sorry you’re wetting your pants about how much Tess Daly gets paid. Still, did Tess terminally destabilise the union, accidentally take us out of Europe, and create an entirely failed state which allowed for the rise of Islamic State in North Africa? Did she, Karen? Because unless she did, she’s so far down my list of remuneration give-a-tosses that I honestly wouldn’t have time to get to her if I lived to the age of 876. I mean really. REALLY. How is it possible we’re giving a nano-fraction of a shit what Tess Daly is paid?
That the news should come in the very week that the BBC has lost the Great British Bake Off feels like a particularly sledgehammer instance of cosmic timing. The latter departure has amusingly short-circuited the Daily Mail, whose editorial line now has – yes – the soggiest of bottoms. Oh dear, did the Beeb lose your favourite show? Did it have to go to a commercial station because the BBC can’t get into big-money bidding wars because “nobody wants it to”? Who’d a thunk it? I’ll definitely be sure to fax you when my tears liquefy. Or as Karen Bradley puts it: “Licence fee payers expect spending to be closely watched.” Can you see how thrilled they are this week, Karen?
And publishing talent salaries makes commercial poachings just so much simpler. Well done, Tories! You’ve made it far easier for many stars who people enjoy watching to be lured behind a paywall, which does not deliver value for licence fee payers. It delivers upset, annoyance, bewilderment and even rage.
I note from her biography that Karen is a “former KPMG tax manager”, an epithet I literally fell asleep in the middle of. Anyway, given she’s now a culture secretary, we already know she knows next to nothing about culture, as is traditional for most occupants of the role. But it’s enlightening to discover she appears to know so little about business. I’d expect her favourite film to be something like Ghost, but I’d also expect the basic understanding that publishing a list of salaries is an absolute cast-iron, copper-bottomed way to deliver less value for the BBC and the people who use its services.
Even more grimly hilarious is Karen’s apparent belief that the BBC will deliver more value if it embraces “openness and transparency” as far as this sort of thing is concerned. Because that is exactly how the commercial sector works. It always pays to tell everyone else your commercially sensitive information.
The charitable interpretation is that the government’s culturocidal maniacs are trying to hobble the BBC by design as opposed to out of arrant stupidity. Even so, what in the name of even being able to count was Karen doing at KPMG? Would any of her colleagues from the period care to get in touch to fill in some gaps? In the meantime, Lost in Showbiz would like to inquire of the culture secretary: do you think that publishing this commercially sensitive information will a) save the BBC money or b) cost the BBC money? The answer to that question is so fist-gnawingly obvious that it would be deemed too easy even for a money-grubbing phone quiz on ITV’s morning output.
Before I conclude, incidentally, allow me to indulge in some full disclosure of my own: my husband works at the BBC. Even fuller disclosure: I confess to never having been remotely across what his job is. The only aspect of it I ever happen to recall is that if any of the BBC’s output on any platform goes dark, it’s technically his fault. Just in case you need to put a name to an Ofcom complaint or whatever. Would appreciate it if you didn’t bring me into it, because there’s an outside chance he’s already going to have his head in his hands when he reads this column. But if you have to, you have to.
