Gary Lineker will probably be riding the Leicester hype wave until around 2019, but we don’t know how happy he’ll be about the latest government plans.
The Match of the Day host and other high-earning BBC stars such as Chris Evans and Graham Norton will be required to declare how much they get paid.
The government white paper will force anyone at the public-funded broadcaster who earns more than £450,000 a year – the same amount earned by Director General Tony Hall – to reveal their salaries.
It’s all part of the government’s ongoing mission to make the BBC and how its finances are handled more visible to the taxpayer.
John Whittingdale, the Culture Secretary, told Parliament he wished “to see as much transparency as possible” at the BBC, but many stars are reportedly not happy with the government’s perceived meddling with its independence.
The white paper also proposes that BBC regulation is passed on to Ofcom, which currently supervises its commercial rivals. The old BBC Trust will be abolished and replaced with a new board that is partly government-appointed.
Brian Cox was just one of the well-known names to speak out.
Whittingdale is testing my patience. BBC 'Impartiality' can't be judged by a board with majority of government appointed members. Dear God.
— Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) May 11, 2016
Other household names that could be hit by the new salary-declaring rules are news anchors Huw Edwards and Fiona Bruce, and former political editor Andrew Marr.
The Guardian reports that the total number of stars earning between £500,000 and £5m fell from 14 to nine, but more of them were bumped up from the lower wage bracket to be paid more than £1m in 2015.
We reported last month on how Graham Norton last year earned £2.5 million between his salary and additional fees for his work on the Eurovision. His own production company, So Television, is also raking in the bills, making almost £12 million pounds in the last fiscal year.
