BBC to reveal executive pay

UK public broadcaster the BBC is to publish a breakdown of pay for the top 50 earners in BBC management and of executives with the greatest responsibility for spending public money and for overseeing the BBC’s services and operations.

Revealing the new measures in a speech to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountability, annual conference, BBC director-general Mark Thompson said the second group had still to be defined, but the total number of managers affected would be about 100 beyond the executive board, whose salaries are already in the public domain. The group’s expenses would also be published in detail each quarter, he said.

Thompson said the BBC would also disclose the total amount it spent on presenters and actors (‘talent’) in the future, although it would not reveal the amount of money paid to individual presenters, who typically were employed under freelance contracts.