The Prompt

Here we are again. BBC top "talent", from Terry Wogan and Bruce Forsyth to Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton, are paid too much. No way! They should be as in thrall to the ebb and flow of global markets as the rest of us. Say what?

I was convinced BBC presenters existed on some other planet where the recession didn't exist, everyone is white and male, and it was possible to abuse someone at work and keep hold of your job. But lo, it was announced last week that BBC presenters can expect their salaries to be slashed by up to 40 percent when their contracts are renewed.

Hang on a minute. Isn't this what we've all been demanding since we found out about Ross's £18 million BBC contract, which feels like about 18 million years ago but was actually in 2006? And still in the thick of recession he is earning £530,000 just for his Radio 2 show. BBC director-general Mark Thompson is now saying that changes will have to be made. It'll probably happen just as we're emerging out of the economic gloom.

Perhaps we've been neglecting the BBC. We've been so distracted by that pesky business of MPs' expenses that we forgot to be incensed by that other public service sitting pretty at our expense. In fact, we have a committee of MPs to thank for recently turning our gaze away from them towards the BBC, branding the corporation "disgraceful" for refusing to reveal details of radio presenters' salaries. The pot has perhaps never called the kettle black with such defiant cheek.

I thought we were all agreed on this one. These presenters – and the BBC execs whose pay has merely been frozen for 18 months – must be paid less. They should never have been paid so much in the first place. The quality of BBC output hasn't increased with the pay packets of its presenters over the past decade, and the Public Accounts Committee found that such pay packets mean BBC radio shows are up to six times more expensive to produce than their rivals. Programmes, in other words, have become more expensive to make not because they are of a higher quality or more ambitious, but because a few people take home more money.

Graham Norton's business partner last week complained that we've got it wrong, top presenters still don't earn enough and they're being scapegoated. "The entire television industry is based, squarely, on the shoulders of a very few talented people," he said, and this should be acknowledged. But this is an argument based on ego alone. No one, in or out of the BBC, is indispensable.

Just get on with it, I say. In the past the BBC has used the market as an excuse, claiming they needed to pay inflated salaries to keep hold of top names. Now, they're conceding, the market has changed and the days of over the odds salaries for "talent" are over. What they won't say is that they never should have begun.


OUR WRITERS' WEEK

CHITRA RAMASWAMY
ARTS WRITER

Despite the rather uninspired location of the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, it was a pretty upbeat kick-off to this year's Fringe, with new chief exec Kath Mainland giving a confident if clipped speech at the launch and focusing on the raft of cheaper and free shows this year. That evening, at the launch of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival programme at Hotel Missoni, we were asked to raise our glasses to the new box office system after last year's nightmare collapse on the first day, proving that a sense of humour about past cock-ups is always a step in the right direction.

STUART KELLY
LITERARY EDITOR

In a moment of naive optimism I watched the new "comedy" Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire on BBC2, which didn't seem to get the difference between satirising fantasy clichés, and witlessly indulging them. In fact, this was so lame and two-dimensional it made Fraggle Rock look like I, Claudius. Fingers crossed that next week's Psychoville, by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton is a bit better. My stint in TV fangatory's been more than improved by discovering the excellent Carnivale on DVD – it's just a looming pity they only made two of the projected six seasons.

FIONA LEITH
ARTS EDITOR

Though it pains me to say so, Richard Jobson's latest directorial effort, New Town Killers, doesn't pack the social or cinematic punch it clearly sets out to. Starring Dougray Scott and Alastair Mackenzie as malevolent bankers looking to play cat and mouse, the narrative and character development are clunky. The streets of Edinburgh are used as the playground, but I was surprised how tight Jobson's focus was when faced with such a vista. That said, some of the cinematography is reminiscent of Michael Mann at his best, and the young star, James Anthony Pearson, shows fantastic promise.