THE TELEGRAPH: With its stars being picked off by rival broadcasters and looming cuts to pay and pensions, the mood at the BBC is said to be 'sulphurous'. Neil Midgley looks at the tensions pulling it apart.
Saturday July 17 will see the end of an era at the BBC – and one that the corporation will be glad to forget. Just before 1pm, Jonathan Ross will hang up his Radio 2 headphones for good – his three-year, £18 million deal finally at an end. Ross became a totem of almost everything the BBC's critics say is wrong with it: his massive pay packet, his foul-mouthed style and, fatally, his infamous harassment, with Russell Brand, of the actor Andrew Sachs on Brand's Radio 2 show. His exit should be the opportunity for a golden new dawn at Television Centre in White City: with the page turned and lessons learned, the BBC could and should be ready to show itself not only leaner and meaner, but with higher editorial standards and a greater commitment to the public service broadcasting ideals for which it was founded in the days of John Reith.
Yet when Sir Michael Lyons, the chairman of the BBC Trust, stood up to give an agenda-setting speech at the Voice of the Listener and Viewer consumer group last week, he did not give a confident performance. Though he gathered headlines in the following day's papers with his demand for the BBC's top-earning on-screen stars to be publicly listed, he had in fact dithered over the text of the speech almost until he delivered it. He even added a crucial caveat – that individual presenters' salaries need not be disclosed – while he was on his feet. Often stumbling over his words, he looked and sounded weary and unsure.
Today, Sir Michael will be on his feet again, next to director-general Mark Thompson at the presentation of the BBC's annual report. One Tory MP recently described the pair – with some frustration, given Sir Michael's role as regulator of Thompson's output – as being "like Romulus and Remus, they appear everywhere as a double act". But tensions between those who run the BBC, led by Thompson, and the supervisory Trust, led by Sir Michael, have never been higher. According to one senior source, the executive and the trust are now in "almost open warfare", with the trust's most recent demands about "talent pay" disclosure only hardening the resentment felt at Television Centre towards the trust. The source added that if Sir Michael had gone further and asked for presenters' actual salaries to be disclosed, the pair might have publicly fallen out there and then. Thompson has since ruled out publishing the salary details of the BBC's stars. >>> Neil Midgley | Monday, July 05, 2010
