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£250,000 pay cut rumoured
Graham Norton signs a new exclusive deal with the BBC
The presenter has signed a £4 million deal for two years according to the Sun. This would mean a £250,000 pay cut to his previous alleged salary of £2.5 million. The BBC has been under pressure to cut the salaries of its top presenters while the Corporation needs to save money through cuts. The deal will include presenting a variety of programming, including a BBC One chat show. Graham Norton is also expected to go on commentating on the Eurovision Song Contest for the BBC.
He will also host the new talent search Over the rainbow to find a Dorothy for a new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on the Wizard of Oz, and the TV Bafta awards, says The Sun.
The long time BBC Eurovision commentator and host Terry Wogan retired also from his popular BBC Radio 2 morning show before Christmas.
The BBC is yet to announce of their plans of how the UK entry for the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest in Oslo will be chosen. The casting company responsible for finding the contestants for last year’s selection show Your country needs you sent out a call for auditions over Twitter late last year, however. Media reports have also linked Take That’s Gary Barlow to the process as well as ex-Blue singer Duncan James. Mr. James has later officially denied his involvement with the BBC Eurovision project.
UPDATE: The two-year contract with Graham Norton has now been confirmed by the BBC. The BBC won't however discuss the pay arrangements and alleged pay cuts according to BBC.co.uk. A BBC spokeswoman is reported to have said: We are delighted to be signing a new two-year deal with Graham Norton, a hugely talented and valued presenter.
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UK should send Alexandra Burke!
No surprises here.
As I said last year - the BBC won't be doing the same selection process this year. We've known for months that ALW & Norton will be doing the new search for Dorothy... Also, although last years selection show was welcomed on here it was a ratings flop for it's Saturday night slot.
The selection process last year was simply to fill the Saturday night ALW/Norton slot e.g. Maria, Joseph, Nancy/Oliver, ESC and now Dorothy.
So - what will the BBC do? Who knows - though I would like them to announce the plans and get the entry sorted out to enable a promo tour to be done. However, I fear that last year was a one off and it's back to normal.
Good for him!!!!
I would like N-Dubz, Boty Luv or The Saturdays to represent UK in ESC!! 
I like Graham Norton usually, though I found his commentary during last years Eurovision was, well, very boring actually! Let's hope he does a better job this year.
As for the preselection, I'm quite worried for the UK. It sounds like they still don't have any solid plans, and if they don't sort something out soon they'll be stuck with another rubbish entry.
Glad to hear Duncan James has ruled out. They can choose a better singer tbh.
I hope Gary Barlow will write the song (or even represent with Take That!)
As for Graham Norton, I really like him a lot! Only he could have replaced Terry Wogan.
Duncan James I think would be great.
He 'can' sing live, He was the best from the band Blue. He is a well known face in, The UK and in Ireland. (that means 8+ points allready for the UK)
He can outsing Miro and Tom Dice easy, I watched both of them singing live and might I say I went from neutral to disapointment..., plus with Gary Barlow writing the song I'm sure it would be a great song, Gary Barlow did infact write The UK No.2 (IE No.1) single 'Guilty' and many others for Take That, such as 'Shine'
The Duncan bashing needs to stop, when people heard of Alexander Ryback participating for Norway in MGP last year he was bashed waaaaay before his song was even made public, people saying he had no personality and could not sing..
Well Alex came 1st, by the biggest margin ever, He won for a western country also, with no disapora at all. Plus the main bulk of his points a good 30% came from Eastern Europe. So if Dancan did sing for the UK. I would actualy expect before you knew the song to bash him but its obvious whoever the UK send they will take things seriously for 2010 I think.. the BBC is a great broadcaster afterall.
(but i hope its nothing to do with ALW.. Gary Barlow could write something better than 'My Time' in his sleep)
The Sun is undoubtedly the most pointless, and probably most racist newspaper in the U.K, apart from the Daily Express .. the funny thing is that I deliver both of those papers to the old people's home nearby haha 
Axel
Aha
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I wish the BBC would announce whats happening with the Uk entry, im getting bored of waiting. And Axel, I though the sun newspaper was 30p? haha . Still rubbish and full of cr*p lol
I'm surprised we haven't heard anything official from the BBC yet, makes me wonder whether they're just going to do an internal selection.
'So You Think You Can Dance' is on BBC1 on Saturday nights from now until March, so no room for YCNY in that slot (understandable, the ratings were crap last year).
So I'm thinking some little series on a Friday night or an internal selection - either way I hope the BBC is sticking to last year's formula; get a good songwrited on board.
Stockholm,
the sun is a gossip paper.... speculations, naked women etc... so not really trustworthy. It cost 20p, says enough, no ?
I also hope we'll have some news from the BBC soon 
Daniel
Excuse my ignorance, is The Sun not trustworthy 
He's worth every penny of that two million if he provides a commentary as great as he did last year. I loved it. Pity my dvd hard drive packed up and I lost the recording. :-(
best thing about this article is that duncan james ruled himself out, hes as charismatic as park bench.
im wondering when we will find out what the bbc is planning for this year. no news at all so far
Still a lot of money but to be honest, Graham is the funiest person on tv for the moment... I simply love him and his humour.... he did a very good job at Eurovision aswell.
The most shocking thing about this report is referring to The Sun as a newspaper 
I'm getting really tired of waiting for news on the BBC selection process. I fear it's because they're trying to cobble something together along the lines of the awful 'Eurovision: Your Decision' show the year before last.
Still an obscene amount of money IMO, despite the fact that I like Graham Norton
He was quite good last year!
what wasn't that a good thing jonny?
i thought it was a great decision....means time for promo, and extra time to plan what to change.
Tbh I think we're going to hear something from the BBC soon ..
Last year we heard about YCNY very early on which resulted in the song being selected in January, which wasn't a good move imo, so I wouldn't be surprised if we get a press release soon and the NF is sometime in March
I hope they annouce something otherwise it will be months before our selection...meaning less time for promo tours.
don't they realise that was one of the most successful parts of last years good placing????
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