Highly pleased to learn today that the BBC's planned closure of its often excellent digital radio station BBC 6 Music has been overturned. The BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyon has listened to the widespread clamour against this, and has rejected the closure proposals. It was going to be closed down to save £7m a year, as part of the Corporation's budget cuts. To put this in perspective - if also to repeat myself - until recently the same Corporation was paying Jonathan Ross £6m a year. (I was going to indulge in a small rant too against Fiona Bruce, but have thought better of it.)
Michael Lyon might well have thought Ross' salary an argument in itself: he has also called for the BBC to publish the fees/salaries it pays its top "stars". Of course Mark Thompson, the BBC's useless Director-General, is against this, and says "it would be wrong and it would be damaging and destructive to the BBC and its ability to get top stars to actually publish individual salaries.” Well he would say that, wouldn't he?
Meanwhile Radio 6 Music lives!
Great that 6music is saved, but it's worth bearing in mind that of course Ross' salary isn't 6 million pounds a year - that's the money paid to his production company to make the programmes, from which he will draw a substantial wage.
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