Highest-paid stars should be 'responsible' and act in solidarity with the rest of the public sector, says broadcaster
The 71-year-old broadcaster said the BBC had to show solidarity during the financial crisis. "People are worried where their hard-earned money is going, and the BBC is a visible target," he said.
His comments came as the corporation's director general, Mark Thompson, said it would be "damaging and destructive" for the BBC to reveal how much its brightest stars were paid.
According to figures released this year, the corporation spends £54m on its top-earning stars, said to include Jonathan Ross, Graham Norton and Fiona Bruce.
Wogan told the Mail on Sunday: "The good old days have passed. You have to be responsible. The audience would be unhappy if they thought you were being overpaid. Look how the public reacted to, say, Jonathan Ross".
Working in television, he added, should not make people believe they were in a privileged position when cuts had to be made. "Frankly, salaries were far too high," he said. "They could stand to take a 10-15% cut. If the public sector is taking that, I see no reason why everybody shouldn't. And indeed I've taken it myself".
Thompson said that although the corporation had accepted last week's decision by the BBC Trust to bow to pressure and disclose the names and salary bands of top earners, it was firmly against the publication of the salaries paid to its biggest stars.
Interviewed on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show Thompson said he had to balance the "legitimate right" of the public to know how much was spent on talent against individual demands for confidentiality. Thompson said: "I continue to believe it would be wrong and it would be damaging and destructive to the BBC and its ability to get the top stars to actually publish individual salaries".
He said: "The BBC is trying to find the right balance between, on the one hand, the public's absolutely legitimate right to have a sense of what the BBC spends on on-air talent, versus a broadcasting industry where confidentiality is the absolute norm, is the expectation and in some cases is the contractual right of the individuals involved".
It emerged last week that BBC directors, including Thompson, will take a pay cut equivalent to 8.5% of their salaries by working for a month without pay for each of the next two years. Directors have already waived all bonuses and agreed to freeze their salaries until 2013.
