CITY AND SUBURBAN
How the team at Gunge Television plans to reward its public service
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
The ingenious goings-on at London Weekend Television, where the board and Its senior management plan to offer them- selves 15 per cent of the shares, have struck a chord in a hundred Gucci wallets. LWT's chairman Christopher Bland is thinking forward to 1992, when the commercial television franchises come up for auction. To keep its franchise, the argues, LWT must keep its best people, so he will grapple them to his soul with hoops of stock. As for the present shareholders, whose stake would be diminished, Mr Bland (affectionately known, after the Beatrix Potter character, as `Pigling') will cheer them up with a special payout of cash. His example has been keenly watch- ed by my friends at Gunge Television. Gunge, with a rich catchment area, has one of the most enviable of all these licences to print money, and is dismayed to see it threatened by an iconoclastic government obsessed with such notions as competition and choice. The top men and women at Gunge have solid contracts, suitable salar- ies, matching pensions, share options, cars, drivers, signing accounts at the Savoy and White Tower, and first go at the Wimble- don tickets. Now, though, they will need an incentive. Gunge's merchant bank has roughed out a plan which will give them a controlling interest — no more than 51 per cent — in the company. Ideologically Crazed ministers will soon permit television companies to be taken over, but the Gunge management's holding would serve to block any such threat, and free the holders from anxiety over their jobs. This will be said to add value to the company, much to the benefit of its other shareholders, who can reflect that half of Gunge is better than no bread. In addition they will be sent a £10 book token (or studio tickets for a quiz show, if they prefer). Suggestions that they would then be paid off with their own money are brushed aside by Gunge's direc- tor of public affairs, in a statement issued on behalf of his public relations manager by his personal assistant, Lucinda. All three have been hand-picked for incenti- visation — along with such key executives as the company secretary, the directors of Personnel and marketing, the head of strategic planning, the expense control section and the entire department of prog- ramme prevention. One or two people who work on the television side may also be eligible. The City will be reminded that
such 'golden handcuff deals were its own invention, offered by securities firm in the approach to Big Bang. How successful the deals were, and how profitable the firms are, is now evident. As to the wider public, Gunge plans to rally support with an advertising campaign, combining nostalgia (`The channel that gave your Vera Lynn') with menace (Would you let a stranger in your home?'). If by any chance Gunge were to lose its franchise, the golden handcuffs would conveniently turn into golden parachutes, but the public affairs department insists that such an outcome is unthinkable, and that the new scheme will leave Gunge unchallenged in its mission for public service broadcasting. Asked in the American Bar what Gunge meant by public service broadcasting, Lucinda's boss said: 'What we do, old boy.'
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