Should we leave television in the past or pay Top Gear presenters £3 million?

I’ve just read the news about the BBC offering Chris Evans £3m over three years to be the new host of Top Gear.  I find it absolutely incredulous that this kind of money is still being offered to presenters.  How can such huge sums be justified?  No doubt Chris has got a huge fan base, but as a presenter of Top Gear, he is an unknown quantity.  I have heard that the programme, makes a significant return for the BBC from other sales and marketing activities, so why didn’t the corporation link his pay (capped to £3 million of course), from the popularity of the programme going forward.

There are two other burning issues relating to this.  The first is that Chris will be only one of three presenters.  Hopefully he will be the flagship member who will receive the largest salary, but I feel that the BBC are desperate to prove a point that they are in the mood to just throw money around, so they don’t lose face, after having sacked Jeremy Clarkson, and, facing the humiliation of Richard Hammond and James May walking away as well.  For all we know the recruitment of the three new presenters could cost another £3 million each!  Why do I care so much about this?  It is because all the money used to pay these salaries will come from the income raised by the licence fee, and, I feel that there are better uses for this money.

The second issue is about how the salary will be paid.  I hope that it will be through the PAYE system, and, hence will have all the appropriate tax and national insurance contributions deducted at source.  If this is the case then at least the UK Government will benefit from the tax revenues from the salaries.  My worry is that it will be paid into a company.  Although I do not know the intricacies of this sort of arrangement, I am lead to believe that they can be arranged in such a manner as to minimise the amount of tax paid by individuals who receive salaries this way.

Although I didn’t watch it live, I did feel the need to use the Channel Four catch up service to watch the recent special edition of TFI Friday.  Back in the day, when I was a lot younger (about 19 years or more to be precise), I used to watch the programme religiously, and, admit to rather enjoying it.  However, I cannot say the same for the special.  This show really does need to stay in the past.  I felt it was badly put together, and, didn’t flow.  To me it could quite visibly be seen that the guests in the bar were absolutely bored to tears.  When Chris did the banker thing to extend the time of the show, their hearts must have dropped!

As a precursor to his Top Gear hosting, we had his Mum racing around the track on her mobility scooter.  Although she provided the most entertaining segment of the show when she was interviewed by Lewis Hamilton, the actual clip on the track was worse than watching paint dry.  I hope he has better ideas for when the actual show starts.  God forbid he may even have to think of some new formats, and, just not go with what has been done before as he did on the TFI special.