THE TELEGRAPH: The BBC is crumbling under the weight of its own monolithic structure, and suffering from the extravagances of its self-indulgent leaders, writes Gill Hornby.
Who can begrudge the groaning pension pot of the BBC's Alan Yentob? Not many serious cultural figures, scions of the arts establishment, would be willing to dress up in a toga for a bit of publicity. Surely that's worth a million or two straight off?
Yet somehow, the news that the BBC's arts supremo has a pension pot worth £6.3 million if bought as an annuity on the open market to cushion his retirement, after a life spent working for the corporation, has caused an outcry. Admittedly, the fact that this comes after another dispute over his expenses in 2004 (he was cleared), the revelations that the BBC paid for a large party at his country home (business contacts were present), and that he had not exactly been present at interviews for a documentary (look, he's a busy man, OK?) does not help his case. But that doesn't matter, because that case has been made for him by the corporation's director-general, Mark Thompson.
Thompson, whose own pension pot is valued at a mere £3.2 million, has stressed time and again that the BBC has to pay competitive salaries to compete in a competitive market. Otherwise, he fears, there will be a "talent drain" from his corporation. So, of course Yentob needs an annual salary of £325,000, with all the perks and the long-term securities that come with it. There aren't many little bearded men out there capable of making the sort of programmes that we have all enjoyed from his Imagine series. If the BBC doesn't pay for long documentaries about Werner Herzog, surrealism and the "mysterious, offbeat, sexually charged world" of the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, then… hang on, who would snap him up, exactly?
If you look around, the answer is simple: nobody. The director-general may not have noticed, but commercial television in Britain is in a state of collapse at the moment. His talk of a "talent drain" began in defence of Jonathan Ross's ludicrous pay deal of £18 million over three years, which was, of course, negotiated well before he disgraced himself in the Andrew Sachs fiasco. Back then, Thompson's argument might have had some substance. But now, unless Ross fancies being a judge on The X Factor, he has no option but to stay put at the BBC. And unless Yentob would like to employ his wealth of cultural knowledge in the production of Britain's Got Talent – plenty of surrealism there for him to play with – he's better off where he is, too.
Also, if the corporation is so keen on hanging on to its talent, it is rather curious that it throws such fabulous parties for that talent when it leaves. The cost of sending off John Birt, the former director-general, is estimated at £150,000. Stories about £100 bottles of champagne for celebrities and £400 cakes are never going to go down well with those scrimping to pay for their licence fees. And it is simply not good enough for Thompson to defend it all by comparing the BBC to the commercial sector. It is not the commercial sector. The commercial sector is a tough place to work: you have to fight your corner and earn your ratings, or you're finished. It is completely market-reactive out there, whereas the BBC is the cushiest outpost left in the media world. >>> Gill Hornby | Tuesday, July 07, 2009
