Yentob Conceals 2nd BBC Salary

[Teddy Bear]

I wonder how long it will take incoming director general Tony Hall to tell the public that the BBC is again 'open and accountable' in one of his 'trust restored' speeches.

Yentob's £150,000 salary secret: BBC arts supremo fails to declare that he's paid TWO separate salaries by the Corporation

By Richard Kay

Superannuated BBC arts supremo Alan Yentob is under fire for failing to declare that he is paid two separate salaries by the Corporation.

Yentob, 66, one of the BBC’s most powerful executives working under new director-general Lord Hall, is paid one salary of £183,300 as BBC Creative Director.

In keeping with BBC rules, he declares this income in the official online register of the BBC’s 100 senior managers as his ‘salary and total remuneration’.

But details obtained under Freedom of Information laws confirm he is paid a second salary as editor and presenter of arts series Imagine.

The BBC and Yentob are refusing to reveal how much this extra income is, but BBC insiders say it is ‘easily’ in the region of £150,000 per year, bringing his actual total BBC pay to around £330,000.

Critics are calling this a ‘secret’ salary, saying that Yentob’s failure to even mention in the register that he is paid for his work on Imagine leaves licence payers with the impression his BBC earnings are substantially lower than they are.

In response to the FoI request, the BBC confirmed his salary as Creative Director ‘does not include any remuneration for Mr Yentob’s contribution to the Imagine series’.

It declined to divulge what Yentob earns for Imagine, stating: ‘The information regarding Mr Yentob’s fees for the Imagine series is out of scope of the Act,’ because the BBC ‘is not required’ to supply it under the law.

The BBC uses this opt-out because it believes presenters’ fees are commercially sensitive. It argues that, if known, rival broadcasters could use this information to their advantage.

Yentob’s entry in the BBC’s Declaration of Personal Interests, a separate online register, also fails to mention that he has a second BBC salary via Imagine, of which a new six-part series starts this month.

Tory MP Philip Davies, a member of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee, says Yentob was ‘effectively misleading the public’.

Davies says: ‘There is no excuse for Alan Yentob not to declare this. His salary is of great interest to licence payers because they ultimately pay it.

‘Lord Hall has been banging on about a new era of transparency. If he allows this second salary to be kept secret he’s going to fail his own test at the first hurdle.

‘It’s not as though Alan Yentob’s true salary is commercially sensitive anyway because he’s not at risk of being poached by a rival.’

[Teddy Bear]

This story just highlights the arrogant, pompous, slimy mindset prevalent among the BBC echelon.

Yentob is the BBC creative director, and with the 2 salaried he receives, earns £330,000 a year. This is not to mention the excessive other perks he partakes of. According to him, many BBC 'stars' are paid too much, but he feels justified with his own salary.

Has anybody noticed just how much creativity abounds at the BBC?
Which is why they have to show repeats from 20+ years ago for entertainment.

I deserve my £330,000 BBC salary, say Yentob: Executive defends his pay packet and admits he feels uneasy about salaries paid to top stars

• Alan Yentob paid both as BBC's creative director and editor of Imagine
  
• The 66-year-old says he deserves his £330,000-a-year salary
  
• However, he attacks salaries for 'BBC top talent' such as Gary Lineker

By Alasdair Glennie

With several lucrative BBC salaries to his name, he is known to envious colleagues as ‘Two-Jobs’.

But it seems even fat cat Alan Yentob feels hard done by compared with some of the corporation’s biggest stars.

The 66-year-old executive - who is paid around £333,000 a year as the BBC’s creative director and arts presenter – has admitted he feels uneasy with the amount its top talent is paid.

Appearing in a panel discussion at the Radio Academy’s festival in Salford yesterday, Yentob agreed the ‘huge amounts of money’ thrown at presenters such as Graham Norton and Gary Lineker were unfair.

During the question and answer session – which was aired on Radio 5 Live – he responded to angry comments made by radio listener Chris Jones, who complained he felt ‘betrayed’ by high levels of BBC pay.

He also objected more generally to the huge salaries earned by top Premiership footballers such as Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney.

Mr Jones said: ‘A lot of stars are paid huge amounts of money, and yet you’ve got Joe Public who earns around £25,000 a year, which to a lot of these people is nothing.

'Wayne Rooney plays football for a week, and I have to work 35 years to make what he earns for a week. How’s that fair? You’ve got the likes of Graham Norton and Gary Lineker [at the BBC].’

It is thought Graham Norton and Gary Lineker both earn about £1.5million a year at the BBC.

Wayne Rooney – who does not earn a BBC salary – earns an estimated £15.6million a year from Manchester United and commercial endorsements.

Mr Yentob attempted to defend BBC salaries by saying they were lower than those earned at its commercial rival ITV, but admitted: ‘I agree with you about what Wayne Rooney earns. I agree with you about what presenters of all kinds earn, including [5 Live presenter] Richard [Bacon] and I and others.’

However, Yentob justified his own pay by saying he was ‘valuable’ to the BBC because of his ‘relationship with talent’ and ‘understanding of the networks and the schedules’.

The arts ‘supremo’ is paid one salary of £183,300 as BBC creative director, and another as editor and presenter of arts series Imagine.

He has refused to reveal how much this extra income is, and it is not declared on the BBC’s official register. But BBC insiders say it is ‘easily’ in the region of £150,000 a year.

The executive is also understood to have accrued a pension pot worth £6million during his decades of working at the Corporation.

Yentob also defended the huge earnings of Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson, who raked in £13.3million by selling his production company to the BBC last year and also earns a salary of around £1million paid out of the licence fee.

Yentob said: ‘Jeremy does make a lot of money. However, the franchise of Top Gear is the most successful factual programme in the world. So a large amount of money comes in, significantly more than anything Jeremy gets, into the BBC, and goes back into the licence fee through BBC Worldwide. There are in any society, any environment some people who do particularly well but he is making money, and that format is making money, for the BBC.’

[Teddy Bear]

There are certain things besides the obvious to note in this story.
Note in the post directly above, where even in the headline Yentob admits he feels uneasy about salaries paid to top stars.
Well it appears he's done an about turn, as in this article he now says:
He has repeatedly argued the BBC is right to pay its stars high salaries to allow it to compete with its commercial rivals.

And in his latest interview, he said the same principle meant the publicly funded organisation should not always be transparent about the way it operates.

He said: ‘[The BBC] can’t compete with its hands tied behind its back and being told: "You can’t pay the talent this and you’ve got to disclose everything you do". The BBC has to be as open as it can possibly be but it also has to be able to operate.’

Naturally he still defends his own 2 salaries totalling £330,000 though he has the arrogance to consider it 'half a salary'.

Perhaps the worst of his statements that highlight this scum for what he truly is, is the following: Asked about the Savile fiasco, he said people needed credit for 'owning up'

Just who did he see 'owning up' to anything?
Lying is what the BBC see as 'creative'

My £183,000 is only half a salary, says BBC's 'two jobs' Yentob: Executive says he is only criticised because he is 'easy to take the p*** out of'

• Alan Yentob has two roles at the BBC earning him a combined £330,000
• But he told a newspaper interview he never sees any resentment
• Asked about the Savile fiasco, he said people needed credit for 'owning up'

By Alisdair Glennie

His pair of six-figure pay deals at the BBC have earned him the nickname ‘Two Jobs’ from his colleagues.

But Alan Yentob has defended his generous remuneration, saying: ‘It’s not a double salary, it’s half a salary.’

The 66-year-old earns £183,000 as the corporation’s creative director and a second pay packet, thought to be around £150,000, for presenting the Imagine arts series.

But he said the only reason people criticise his role is because he is ‘easy to take the p*** out of’.

‘I’ve been here for a long time, I’ve run all the channels, people have heard of me. I sound like I have famous friends, I’m easy to take the p*** out of,’ he told The Guardian.

'Every day I walk through the streets, I don’t see that resentment - only from certain bits of the press, I think.'

‘Let’s look at this double salary thing. If you look at my salary for the executive role it’s half what you would expect it to be. I’ve got a relatively thick skin. I have to put up with it. I know from my colleagues that they like working with me and there’s no hierarchical feel with me.’

On top of his total earnings of around £330,000, Mr Yentob – who has been at the BBC since 1968 – is believed to have a pension pot worth £6million.

He has repeatedly argued the BBC is right to pay its stars high salaries to allow it to compete with its commercial rivals.

And in his latest interview, he said the same principle meant the publicly funded organisation should not always be transparent about the way it operates.

He said: ‘[The BBC] can’t compete with its hands tied behind its back and being told: "You can’t pay the talent this and you’ve got to disclose everything you do". The BBC has to be as open as it can possibly be but it also has to be able to operate.’

Mr Yentob added: ‘[Television] is increasingly a global industry. What the BBC does for Britain and can do for Britain, if that is to be sustained it needs to be funded adequately.'

When asked about the string of recent crises at the BBC – from the Jimmy Savile scandal to the £100million Digital Media Initiative fiasco – he responded said people needed to be given credit for 'owning up'.

Despite his defensive stance, Mr Yentob did admit the BBC is currently failing in one area: the number of women and ethnic minorities it puts on air.

He said: ‘We’ve got more of an issue on-screen and we’re trying to address it.'

[Teddy Bear]

Never mind about 2 salaries that Yentob is known to draw, now it appears that he's milking another one.

BBC accused of ‘behaving like a cartel’ after claims Creative Director Alan Yentob is paid THREE different salaries totalling more than £300,000 a year

• Mr Yentob believed to collect thousands from sales of his show overseas
• Already receives annual £150,000 presenting fee and £183,000 in pay
• MPs today claim executive Mr Yentob is 'a law unto himself' at the BBC

By Katherine Rushton For The Daily Mail

Alan Yentob is paid three different salaries by the BBC, the Mail can disclose today.

The BBC creative director is already known as ‘two jobs’, thanks to the £150,000-a-year presenting fee he receives on top of his £183,000-a-year executive salary.

However, it would seem that ‘three jobs’ is more appropriate, after it emerged that he also collects tens of thousands of pounds a year from sales of his programme overseas.

The 68-year old has a secret contract in place, allowing him to cream off part of the money raised by the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, whenever it sells his Imagine arts series to foreign broadcasters.

MPs have branded his behaviour as ‘outrageous’, and accused the BBC of behaving like a ‘cartel’ which lines the pockets of its managers at the public’s expense.

Conservative Andrew Bridgen said: ‘Those programmes are made with licence fee payers’ money and they belong to the licence fee payer. They do not belong to Yentob. It’s outrageous. It’s a scandal. Alan Yentob is a law unto himself. He has the ability to commission himself to make a programme for the BBC, paid for by the licence fee payer, and pay himself whatever he thinks he is worth.

‘I challenge the BBC to think of another example of an organisation where that would be seen as acceptable.

UKIP MP Douglas Carswell said Mr Yentob’s behaviour was ‘even more outrageous’ than a banker’s.

‘The TV bureaucracy are incredibly well paid. Without risking their own money they find all sorts of ways to help themselves to ours. It’s systematic at the BBC. Management enriches itself personally, and socialises its losses,’ he said.

‘They’re behaving like all cartels, and enriching themselves at our expense. The BBC aristocracy is doing incredibly well, and at the same time there are people in my [constituency] who face imprisonment because they can’t afford to pay the licence fee.’

BBC Worldwide was set up in order to help boost the BBC’s income, by capitalising on the programmes that licence fee payers have already pay for.

It sells programmes around the world, and – in the case of major series like Top Gear – licences events, magazines and branded goods for sale.

However, Mr Yentob’s so-called ‘back end rights’ deal means that every time an episode of Imagine is sold to a foreign broadcaster, he takes a percentage as well.

It is not clear how much money he makes in this way, but sources said it was likely to be between 10 and 20 per cent.

He is understood to have his arts show to other broadcasters around 100 times. Based on a sale price of £10,000 a time, this could have siphoned off nearly £200,000 into Mr Yentob’s pocket, on top of his other income.

A number of the BBC’s biggest stars have deals similar to Mr Yentob’s in place, to prevent them leaving the BBC for another broadcaster where they might expect a share of the profits from their content.

However, insiders are furious that Mr Yentob has also arranged one for himself.

The television executive has spent his entire career at the BBC, and sources claim that he would be unlikely to land a similar arts show on another channel if he left.

The BBC refused to confirm that Mr Yentob collects extra cash in this way. ‘Any artist payments made as a result of these sales is not something we would divulge due to commercial confidentiality,’ a spokesman said.

Mr Yentob only declares his £183,000-a-year salary as creative director. The BBC refuses to publish the exact sum he receives for presenting shows like Imagine, on the basis that it is ‘commercially sensitive’ because so-called ‘talent’ could be poached by another broadcaster.

However, the veteran television executive defended his payment arrangements last year, by claiming that his £183,000 executive pay only amounts to half a salary.

‘If you look at my salary for the executive role it’s half what you would expect it to be,’ he said in an interview with the Guardian.

The Mail called Mr Yentob numerous times for comment but he could not be reached.