Thompson Uses 'Polls' to Avoid Reducing Paychecks

[Teddy Bear]

The BBC director general is justifying doing nothing about the obscene paychecks handed out to executives there, by claiming that private polls within the BBC indicate that the public is more concerned by repeats, quality of content, impartiality, swearing and bad language.
If he truly had an ethical conscience he would question why then does the BBC need to pay these executives so much if they are unable to provide original quality programmes that didn't have to resort to bad taste, and were fulfilling their remit by being unbiased. Since he's an immoral creep however he's deciding to carry on milking the licence fee for everything he can along with his cronies.

Notice they even repeat one of the criticisms with 'swearing and bad language'. Unless they mean bad grammar in the latter.
Can you imagine the polls they refer to? It probably just asks what are your main concerns - repeats, quality of content, impartiality, or swearing and bad language? Maybe they should try one that includes how much they pay themselves and their 'stars'

BBC director general refuses to act on scale of executive pay
Mark Thompson, the director general of the BBC, has vetoed a review of executive pay because the corporation’s private polling shows that viewers care more about repeats.

By Andrew Pierce
Despite the public furore over the revelation that the 100 most senior staff were last year paid £20 million the director general is refusing to contemplate a pay freeze or cut.

One senior MP said that BBC directors were “off their trolley” if they did not move to sate public anger over the pay and expenses revelations.

Figures released by the corporation disclosed the top 100 are paid an average of £199,316 – comfortably exceeding the Prime Minister’s £194,250 salary.

With bonuses and other entitlements, the executives’ average package is more than £214,000 a year – almost 10 times the average British salary.

Mr Thompson’s total pay package last year was £834,000, which is more than 20 times the average salary. The same senior staff also claimed £175,000 in expenses in the first three months of the financial year.

But one senior executive told the Daily Telegraph that there was to be no action on pay because the corporation’s private data showed that salary and expenses were way down the priority list of licence payers.

“If you think less well of the BBC the biggest reason [according to poll data] is repeats, quality of content, impartiality, swearing and bad language.

"There is no evidence that executive expenses get any traction. Executive pay is pretty low too, in single figures,” the executive said. “Only five per cent mention expenses but its between 50 and 60 per cent who are upset about repeats even though we have fewer of them now. They are not talking about our pay."

The BBC released the salary and expenses figures last week to try to live up to the demand that public bodies should be more transparent and open. But the move backfired as the Tories said the scale of the pay packages and expenses were “insulting” to the public, while the Liberal Democrats said licence-fee payers would be “gobsmacked”.

Don Foster, the Lib Dem culture spokesman, said: “They must be off their trolley if they don’t do anything about this. The MPs expenses row showed that transparency is the only way to ensure probity. But if we had taken no action on what was going on the row would have escalated and refused to go away.

“People like me who are big supporters of the BBC want to see the maximum amount of money poured into high quality programmes rather than huge salaries and apparently unlimited expenses.”

The director general is also adamant that the BBC will not bow to pressure from MPs to publish the salary details of its “talent” such as Jonathan Ross, Sir Bruce Forsyth and Graham Norton.

“There no tradition of releasing these details. The whole basis of their salary packages is confidentiality. In our poll data talent pay hardly registered. I cannot see what service there is to the public. The talent bill is a tiny fraction of our costs. l I think the interest in the artistes salaries is entirely prurient."

[Teddy Bear]

George Pitcher at the Telegraph makes similar observations about the immoral greed of the BBC executives while providing little in return.

BBC: a corporation where greed is still good
While bankers and MPs show contrition for their excess, BBC executives still act like the French aristocracy, argues George Pitcher .

If it doesn't have too emetic an effect on you, imagine this. Gathered together in one room, you have Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister; Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs; and Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC. All three head organisations that have benefited mightily from taxpayers' money and have presided over systems in which their people have hugely rewarded themselves. To one degree or another, furthermore, they have tolerated or even celebrated this greed.

You ask what they have to say for themselves. Brown says he has already said sorry to the British people, as has David Cameron as Leader of the Opposition, and has pledged to clean up Parliament's act, though there was precious little evidence of that in the Queen's Speech. Blankfein says he apologised (again) last week for his bank's role in the credit crisis and for his quip that bankers were "doing God's work"; and, by way of penance, Goldman is now pouring money into developing enterprises across America.

Then you turn to Thompson. What does he have to say for himself? Last week, it was revealed that 100 top BBC executives are paid £20 million, the average nudging £200,000, or £214,000 including other entitlements, some 10 times the average British salary. Thompson looks you straight in the eye and tells you that his executives are worth every penny and that, anyway, licence-payers are more concerned about repeats than they are about what his apparatchiks are paid.

A sharp intake of breath is heard from Brown and Blankfein, who shake their heads pityingly at him. Thompson has no idea yet of the opprobrium that can be dumped on those who believe they can carry their old credo of avarice into the new austerity. This kind of greed-is-good chutzpah is now less admired than reviled by those of us who are thoroughly fed up with paying for the self-indulgence of our political and financial elite.

But let us look at the case for Thompson's defence. He isn't indulging in the vogue for insincere apologies, the kind of exercise in faux contrition that causes Tony Blair to apologise for anything from the Irish potato famine to the Slaughter of the First Born, rather than something he actually did, such as invade Iraq. And while political leaders and bankers wring their hands with regret, there's precious little evidence that they have really changed, as Alan "forced to live on rations" Duncan and bumper City bonuses demonstrate only too vividly.

Maybe Thompson is mindful of an incoming Conservative government that intends to slash the licence fee and is holding fire until he sees the whites of shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt's eyes. Nobody ever cuts a budget until they know how much is going to be cut for them. But, speaking of cuts, I think I've cut Thompson enough slack here. The BBC's arrogance in taking our licence fee and paying a couple of hundred grand to its mostly mediocre executives remains breathtaking.

In the wake of the BBC's fat-cat report, we hear that the corporation is unconcerned, because its own research shows that its salaries and expenses are way down the priority list of licence-payers. Apparently, the viewing public is more concerned with "repeats, quality of content, impartiality, swearing and bad language" than it is with executive pay. So that's OK then. But wait a minute. Isn't it gob-smackingly obvious that we might make a connection between these two issues? Not only are BBC executives paying themselves more than the Prime Minister and buying designer handbags on the licence fee, while Thompson even claims 70p expenses for parking his car, but the output is still rubbish, too.

They have so cut themselves off from reality that they can't hear what they're saying. There is now a Versailles mentality among the BBC aristocracy. On being told in their plush parlours that we peasants are being starved of decent broadcasting, the response is less "let them eat cake" as "let them watch cack". But we peasants are revolting. I'm sure BBC execs would smirk in ironic agreement at that observation, but they would do well to mark that the public mood has turned ugly towards those who line their pockets at our expense.

There has been an assumption among the political and banking classes that all this will blow over and that they will return to business as normal, as they see it; that's why parliamentary reform has been dilatory and the shameless "bonuses are back" slogan is heard in banks, even after their semi-nationalisation.

The third pillar of our public-sector greed culture is the BBC. The signs are that the public stick will eventually discipline Parliament and the City into behaving in a better manner than sponging off the state, which means us. So it must and will be for the BBC.