The ‘rich list’ of BBC journalists and presenters has been released and it makes for grim reading: eyewatering sums extracted under threat of criminal sanction from the nation’s TV viewers and handed over to the corporation’s overrated ‘stars’. The Press Gazette has more.
Forty-six BBC journalists earned above £178,000 last year from their work for the corporation, according to the BBC’s annual report for 2023/24 – three more than the year before.
BBC News at Six and Ten presenter Huw Edwards remains at the top of the ranking despite being off-air from July 2023 and for most of the financial year covered by the report.
In total some 54 BBC news staff are paid more than £178,000 (which is the cut-off for the BBC on disclosing top earners). By comparison, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is paid just over £167,000 a year.
Edwards’s salary was somewhere between £475,000 to £479,999 for the year to March 31st 2024. That was a 6% rise from £435,000 to £439,999 in 2022/23.
Edwards left screens after the Sun reported a BBC presenter was alleged to have paid a young person for explicit images. He was identified by his wife Vicky Flint who said he had been hospitalised due to a serious mental health episode.
Edwards formally resigned in April this year on medical advice. He did not receive a payoff but did receive full pay while he was off-air, which the BBC said was “normal policy” for staff while suspended.
Asked during a press briefing about the annual report on Tuesday how the salary paid to Edwards even though he was only on air for three months of the financial year was good value to licence fee payers, BBC Director General Tim Davie said: “We’re always trying to be very judicious with the spending of public money and no one wants to waste a pound but what you’re trying to do, and from the onset of that affair, was trying to act proportionately, fairly and navigate this appropriately. I think that’s what we did.”
Other than Edwards, two presenters earned more than £400,000: Question Time presenter Fiona Bruce and BBC Radio Ulster and BBC One (NI) presenter Stephen Nolan both took home between £405,000 and £409,999.
Worth reading in full.
The Telegraph‘s list (and the Mail’s) includes presenters such as Gary Lineker (£1.35m) and Zoe Ball (£0.95m) paid even more eyewatering sums for their service – despite, in Zoe’s case, seeing audiences fall by over half a million.
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My wife and I are extremely happy not to have contributed to BBC salaries for a number of years! Contemptible organisation.
Nobody can justifiably complain about the bias of the BBC if they still pay the propaganda tax – they are part of the problem. Same could be said about those who complain about establishment parties yet still vote for them.
Same with us two since 23rd March 2020 when we objected to being told what to do by the 3 Stooges in Whitehall and the ghastly harridan in Holyrood.
Paid propagandists, cads and shills for the most part. Face and hair actors presenting and relating the obvious in the case of ‘sports annoucers’ and the mendacious lies and falsehoods in the case of the rest. All sold as ‘trusted’ and ‘scientific’.
BBC is just a propaganda wing of the Globalist NWO and Labour. End the TV tax. Watch it die.
Only the public can bring down the BBC by not paying the propaganda tax. No establishment party will ever defund the BBC – they are joined at the hip.
Can we find out how many millions Saville received over the years for raping young girls at their HQ? Tax payer funded raping.
Is the only legal way to avoid the TV tax to not own a TV?
You only need a TV licence if you want to watch or record live TV or use BBC iPlayer. So I haven’t paid for years.
Thank you.
Millions just refuse to pay yet still have a TV. I am told that you should never, ever engage in conversation with a TV licence inspector if you choose not to pay. So, never allow the missus to answer the door!
Some of those journalists work quite hard – Stephen Nolan, for example, whatever you think of him, does five 90-minute Radio Ulster shows and three 3-hour 5 Live shows per week for about ten months a year, plus a weekly TV show about six months a year.
But I don’t understand how Gary Lineker is worth £1,354,999 per year when all he does is present Match of the Day on a Saturday night and a few weeks of a football tournament once every two years. He makes a few moderately funny jokes, but also annoys a lot of people, he doesn’t even do the analysis of games – that’s left to people like Shearer – and he doesn’t even present Match Of The Day 2 on a Sunday, maybe he thinks he’s not getting paid enough to work two days a week. He’s getting almost £1,000,000 more per year than Shearer, for no good reason.
It’s nice to see our Laura up there in the Top Ten. What would Sunday be without her?
I recognise only 15 names on that list, and would only recognise about half-a-dozen of those.
Maybe because I haven’t watched BBC News and current affairs for years.
Noncing a living , good Old Huw !!
It is only old people and early boomers that bother with it anymore. I read that young people are exposed to less than five minutes a day of BBC propaganda. It is crazy that it can still generate amount this amount of money from televison watchers.
I struggle to see the license fee as anything other than a tax on the weak-minded or weak-willed. If you’re still paying it please stop.
Should be a cap on BBC salaries. If Gary Lineker was offered 300k then he might just decide to go to another channel, so no loss to the viewing public. As it is, the BBC is just using public money to inflate presenters salaries across the industry, if they had a cap of £300k then this would be less of a problem. Also the BBC’s aim should always to be to foster new talent and some of the money saved should be spent on looking for these future household names. When agents want their clients to earn over £300k they will know they will have to start looking elsewhere.
Mind-boggling those these numbers are, please don’t make the mistake of comparing them to the Prime Ministers salary. Every PM makes millions afterwards. They all talk about the privilege of public service, but in reality mean the privileges from public service.