English broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson, the best-paid BBC star, made more than £3 million from the Top Gear TV show. The income from his motoring show has risen by £900,000 because of a grow in dividends paid by the company operating the commercial rights of Top Gear, Bedder 6, from £6 million a year ago to £9 million, reported The Guardian.
BBC Worldwide, BBC’s commercial arm, owns 50% of Bedder 6, from which it received dividends of £4.5 million for fiscal year 2011/2012, compared with £3 million a year earlier, following higher sales of Top Gear DVDs and income from live shows. Clarkson owns 30% of Bedder 6, so that his dividends amounted to £2.7 million, up from £1.8 million a year ago. In addition, Clarkson has received a £350,000 commission for the show, and a “talent fee” from the BBC, estimated at nearly £500,000 pounds.
Clarkson’s estimated revenue amounts to £3.5 million, above the £2.65 million he made in the previous year. Thus, Clarkson is the highest paid star of the BBC, better than Graham Norton (show host of Graham Norton Show), who earned just over two million pounds in license fees and from his production company So Television, or Gary Lineker (former British soccer player, now a sports presenter on BBC), who gets a commission of about £2 million a year.
However, as most of Clarkson’s income does not come from license, he it is not included among the 16 best-paid stars of the BBC, who earn £500,000 pounds a year. A number of three to six of these stars have annual revenues of over £1 million per year. Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman, who holds a 20% in Bedder 6, gets dividends of £1.8 million. Wilman has earned a £60,000 fee for his role in the program.
Bedder 6 was established so that Clarkson can take advantage of sales of Top Gear without receiving large sums of money as commission. Development of Top Gear has been very profitable at a time when other stars of the BBC were forced to accept reductions in wages, at a time when the media group is cutting costs.
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