With a new leader just appointed to the Church of England and a new one now required for the BBC, I thought I’d compare these two venerable public service institutions by numbers. Perhaps the new DG, when appointed, could learn something from the CofE:
| British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) | Church of England (CofE) | |
| Number of Employees | 23,000 | 28,955 |
| Annual Running Cost | £5,090,000,000 | £1,000,000,000 |
| Source of funds | £3,600,000,000 (paid by law by all owners of televisions) | £750,000,000 (voluntarily given by worshippers) |
| Top job annual pay | £450,000 (Director General) | £71,870 (Archbishop of Canterbury) |
| Top job payoff | £450,000 | £0 |
| Top job pension | £877,000 (total pension pot) | £11,500 (annually – the same as all paid clergy in post for 38 years) |
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What exactly is achieved by this? Some sort of grim satisfaction in kicking a highly valuable public service? And where are your figures on weekly audience reach (BBC 120 million; Church of England 2.8 million), audience commitment (BBC 28 hours per week; Church of England 3 hours per week), cost per head (BBC £75 per annum, C of E £143 per annum). Come on…this is not a moment for Christians to bash the BBC, and it doesn’t do for the Church of England to look smug.
Hi Andrew, welcome to TG and thank you for your comment. It was my hope that people would think about the nature of public service and what it really means to serve the nation. The BBC is indeed highly valuable, and I wasn’t meaning to kick it, my father-in-law worked for the Beeb as did as my youngest’s godmother. The BBC, it seems to me, to be confused, at best, about what public service is. It is trapped between a commercial world and vocation – an almost impossible place to be. The DG’s payoff has been rightly questioned by Cameron, but is this simply a symptom of a deeper identity crisis? How do you view it as an insider? Can a public service broadcaster still function as such in a highly materialistic and commerical culture? Can it challenge the assumptions of modern industry? Is it possible to run a successful enterprise without being motivated by large sums for personal gain? That sort of thing.