DIMBLEBY REFUSES £10,000 CONTRACT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 802, 3 December 1954, Page 18

DIMBLEBY REFUSES £10,000

CONTRACT

HE BBC has offered the largest personal contract in its history, £10,000 a year, to Richard Dimbleby-and the free-lance commentator has turned it down. . "T did not want to be bound down, much as I like the BBC and excellent as our friendship is," he explained. "It might mean I would have to do a programme I disliked. I want to be independent to choose the type of broadcasting I like." As part of the BBC’s bid to keep its biggest names under exclusive contract against ‘the threat of commercial television, the corporation is believed to have offered Dimbleby a minimum of £7000 a year for the next five years and, when he refused this, increased it to £10,000. Of 15 stars similarly approached by the BBC, only three have signed contracts — Gilbert Harding (at £5000), Wilfred Pickles and John Ellison. There is probably no voice in radio known to so many millions as Dimbleby’s, not only throughout the Commonwealth, but also wherever there are listeners to the BBC’s many Englishlanguage broadcasts. As wartime commentator and as narrator on each of the great occasions that transform the diverse people of the Commonwealth into one family, his voice has made glowing word pictures for millions of listeners, : Although he will continue his freelance work with the BBC, that is by no i

means his only interest, An additional reason for declining the gilt-edged contract was that "with my Writing, my film company, and my newspaper business, I would not have the time." Puritan Films, of which he is managing director, is interested in commercial films in Europe and America. His newspaper business, recently reformed under the name of Dimbleby and Sons, runs three local newspapers. Richard Dimbleby and his mother own 99 per cent of the capital of £100,000.

J. W.

GOODWIN

(London)