If you thought there was no money in the publicly subsidised arts sector then spare a thought for Jonathan Ross, the BBC One, Radio 2 presenter.
Such is the publicly financed, national broadcasters desire to hang onto the ‘talents’ of Mr Ross they are prepared to shell out £12.5 Million to him, over the next three years, so he will continue presenting his shows, ‘Tonight with Jonathan Ross (basically a chat show)’, ‘Film 2006’ and some other programme about films – reports The Stage. This is in addition to his £500k salary for presenting his once a week radio show on Radio Two.
Our overseas readers may not know that the BBC is publicly funded and non commercial. The money for them to operate is obtained from a legally enforced television licence fee which nets them over £3billion per year to spend. Now that’s not a mistake, rub your eyes and focus, that’s correct, the BBC has more than £3,000,000,000 (approx $5.5billion US) in revenue to spend without lifting a finger to get the money.
The Beeb don’t have to sell advertising (they’re not allowed to even if they wanted too) and other than making sure that a certain level of children’s and religious programming is made they can pretty much do as they please.
It’s nice to know that Mr Ross will be receiving over £12million for his efforts in getting the hard facts from Quentin Tarantino about why he’s such a gifted film director*
*Sarcasm