Hammond & May told to accept ?25,000 per show - or Quit

Since when is the Sun a newspaper? ;)
The main thing that always slightly worried me about rags such as the Sun, the Mirror etc is not so much that they exist, but that for the majority of British people it's the only paper they read. Papers like the the Telegraph, the Times, Independent and Guardian have much lower circulation figures.

Anyhoo, glad to see the negotiations appearantly are over and contracts will be signed. It's gonna be a great autumn.
 
The Times, Telegraph, Observer and the Guardian are trustworthy if not a little biased at times.

Just for the record, they go (from left to rightwingness)

The Guardian, The Observer, The Times (WARNING MURDOCH), The Telegraph.

They all tend to be pretty good on actual news, and the opinion sections are usually interesting, if slightly slanted towards their particular outlook.

For straight news, though, the BBC website wins out.
 
Also i have a question for british folk here. They say Hammond and May will get 25k points per episode, which amounts to 400.000 pounds per year (16 episodes). But how much of it will be income taxed, 47% ?

The highest band is 40%
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/it.htm

So, unless they have their money going through an offshore account (which would be sensible - Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man) then the money they get from the BBC for Top Gear will be 60% of their income - but it won't because there's also National Insurance (I think thats about 7%) and the money they would have to pay to their agent as well.

I really don't get the "unique" BBC finance system. The practice IMO should be to embrace the success i.e. put more money in what proved to be trustworty and good. Nobody wants to watch a show that's been "built" to a price, i.e. with shortcuts, the same way ppl don't want their cars to be built for a price and so on. Budget cuts have never lead to quality improvements anywhere.

The purpose of the BBC is to create Public Service Content that couldn't, wouldn't or might not work on a commercial network.

There are VERY strict rules surrounding how money can be spend and any new service has to go through a long and convoluted public value and commercial impact test.

Some services have been dropped even though money was spent on them because it was decided they could be run by the commercial sector or would have a disproportionate impact on the commercial sector.

Some shows do go to BBC One and they DO get a bigger budget - but only in line with what other shows on BBC One gets.

A BBC show can't be seen to get its budget allocated based on the commercial success of that show - Doctor Who is HUGE but doesn't get a bigger budget because of it.

If a show was seen to get a bigger budget because of its commercial success it could be seen and argued that the show should be done in the commercial sector and as it makes money shouldn't be done by the BBC.

The only way TG can get a bigger budget commercially would be for BBC Worldwide to sign up as a co-production partner and put money into it.

But even then there would be restrictions on how much money could be put in.

It's all about perception.
 
Ryan,

A good bit of clarification for our overseas colleagues of "the unique way in which the BBC is funded" as Jeremy is fond of reminding us. I'm sure one of us could have looked up the rules as it's all in the public domain, but it's very handy having a "man on the inside" as it were.
 
Top Gear should do programme about taxis, then they'd get a budget of ?11.8 million.

I wonder what the fare would be for one hot lap of the track? And would it cost more because the show is broadcast on a Sunday? At least if the Stig was the cabbie you wouldn't get bored by "You'll never guess who I had in the back the other day" stories.
 
Nay - "Sorry mate don't go South of the River this time of night!" I should bloody well know I used to live in the posh end of Catford - what a bugger to get home, N85 bus FTW. BTW it was a very long time ago, N85 seems to have vanished! (Just had a a look at Wiki!)

http://uk.maps.yahoo.com/index.php#q1=London%2C++SE6+2

I agree well worth the money - if some manky jobsworths whose sole ability is to sack people and make every one move to Manchester (the Londoners are really going to LOVE that) get 100,000 bonus then the boys are worth 100,000 GBP per ep no trouble.

The Tax position will not be as straight forward as it at first seems as they are probably directors of their own companies. The best strategy is to pay themselves a limited salary which attracts tax but not NI - remember they will effectively have to pay both employees and employers contributions - ouch. So the strategy is to only pay a limited salary, say 10,000 GBP per annum and take the money out of the company via directors emoluments (Fees) which do not attract NI but still attract tax (40%) . The NI is quite a lot I beleive, employees is about 10% plus something similar for the employers part. (May even be more).

/EDIT FTW = For the Win - ta da - I looked it up in urban dictionary the first time I saw it.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=FTW
 
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BTW WTF does FTW mean? Most of these interweb abbreviations are fairly obvious, but I've never worked that one out.
 
look at what the astronomical salaries for TV stars in the US have gotten us... talentless hacks with egos bigger than their Malibu homes,.

Simon Cowell? I mean it would be one thing if he actually "found" somebody worth remembering, but that hasn't happened. Hell i think the people who select music for TopGear have a better taste then Simon.
 
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BTW WTF does FTW mean? Most of these interweb abbreviations are fairly obvious, but I've never worked that one out.

"for the win".

It originates from an old American tv game show called "Hollywood Squares", basically a huge tic-tac-toe game with celebrities in each of the squares; contestant chooses a square; the celebrity is given a question; they give an answer; contestant decides whether or not the celebrity is telling the truth; Xs and Os are put down if they're right. when contestants chose a square that would let them win the round, they'd say "such-and-such-a-celebrity, for the win!"

The show ran for so long, I think just about all of us who grew up in North America saw it on TV at one point or another, so it's part of the lingo here.
 
Thanks. We had the same show here when I was a kid but I don't remember that phrase. They should revive it in the UK I think. Game shows used to be an entertainment staple but apart from Millionaire (that bastard Tarrant never has called me back) and "Beard or No Beard" with Noel "Crinkly Bottom" Edmonds they are a bit thin on the ground.
 
Since when is the Sun a newspaper? ;)
The main thing that always slightly worried me about rags such as the Sun, the Mirror etc is not so much that they exist, but that for the majority of British people it's the only paper they read. Papers like the the Telegraph, the Times, Independent and Guardian have much lower circulation figures.

Anyhoo, glad to see the negotiations appearantly are over and contracts will be signed. It's gonna be a great autumn.

mail is the best seller, only cos of the free DVDs though (I work at smiths, and they fly off the shelf, our store sold about 300-400 today, by half 12 - to take into conisderation, we had about 150 suns, 90 odd mirrors, 40-50 daily stars, 60-70 times, 30 odd guardians, about 30 telegraphs and 10 -15 independents. no one cares about the express.) (speaking of the free DVDs, they turn people into zombies, think the south park episode night of the living homeless, and then substitute "change" for "where's the DVD" and then you know)

As for the contracts, who cares?
 
Just for the record, they go (from left to rightwingness)

The Guardian, The Observer, The Times (WARNING MURDOCH), The Telegraph.

Where does the Daily Fail Mail sit? Judging by many of the articles that pop up on some websites, they don't seem to know which side they're on.

Meanwhile, back on topic ... I get the impression that the boys themselves probably don't care how much they get paid. I reckon I may have said this on here before, but I suspect the agents are trying to talk the boys' salaries up ... after all, x% of ?25,000 is greater than x% of ?10,000.

Anyway, if you've seen the way May dresses I don't think he's the kind of guy who spends lots of coin needlessly. As for Hammond ... if he needs a few more beans to buy a new toy or to help with school fees, there's always a supermarket somewhere that needs opening ... :p
 
Mail is supposed to be right wing. To the right of the Torygraph (Brit 'joke' there) in fact. They seem to like New Labour on some things tho' go figure!
 
Hammond must be doing alright. There can't be many on BBC2 that run a Porsche, buy a classic GTO, put their name down for a new Morgan, ship a clapped out Opel from Africa back to Blighty, move to a big house in the country etc. etc.

And with regards the Opel, Hammond will be getting more money from the program he's making specially about that. Maybe another ~GBP10 per episode?

All together you have to look at these quys easily getting more than double this figure per year.
 
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