Test Match Special Offer wide of the mark

Much talk on Test Match Special on Monday that MCC nearly had to fork out £42,000 if young bowler Steve Finn had taken 10 wickets in the First Test (he ended up with nine). The Beeb reports: "[TMS presenter] Simon Mann reveals that it will cost MCC £42,000 if Finn takes the final wicket (because of their promotional offer offering refunds to anyone who bought tickets online between 16 April and 4 May if someone takes 10 wickets in the match)."

But would MCC really have been £42,000 out of pocket? Of course not. That deal was hedged with a bookmaker, so a 10 wicket haul would have been financially irrelevant to MCC. Arguably the club would have preferred to have paid out, as it would encourage future deals.

Media news...

More ominous news at the embattled Guardian Media Group? MD Tim Brooks has summoned all staff to a company meeting next week, in which Brooks, editor Alan Rusbridger, and departing chief exec, Carolyn McCall, will be addressing the troops.

"There will be four identical briefings, and you will soon receive an invitation to one of these briefings from your administrator," Brooks write ominously. "We have also arranged separate briefings for staff in Manchester and both our print centres." Developing...

Big losses at the Graun

The announcement by Guardian Media Group that Andrew Miller will become interim chief exec when Easyjet bound Carolyn McCall enters the departure lounge in July got plenty of coverage in rival titles.

Less well covered was the full contents of an email sent to staff explaining the news - in which (buried at the bottom) was the startling news that GMG is going to lose even more money than even it expected.

Amelia Fawcett, chairman of GMG, wrote: "There is, of course, work still to do, and a degree of uncertainty about the future. Unlike many media organisations, though, the ownership structure we have through the Scott Trust allows us to respond to this uncertainty by taking a long-term view.
"In particular, we have constructed the portfolio in a way that deliberately exchanges short-term profit for longer-term capital gain and financial security. This focus on the long term means that the benefits of the work we’ve done will not be reflected in our headline annual results for the year ended in March, which will be published in the next few months. It is inevitable that the accounting around our restructuring in the last year will create a large paper loss – despite the group now being in a stronger position than before."

Just how much trouble is GMG in?

Flight from Berliner

A Guardian employee writes in regarding the news that the Guardian Media Group chief exec is going into the aviation industry: "I see Carolyn McCall is going to easyJet. Apparently her strategy is to give away all the seats for free - they will get millions more passengers, and will, er, somehow make revenues at some point, from something or other...."

Female logic

Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley joins the debate on City bonuses this morning with her piece "To chop City bonuses, start by cutting the testosterone".
Argues Ashley: "A more modern approach would be to widen the pool of people in financial services to include more women, and to pay them fairly, without ludicrous bonuses, in an atmosphere more like the rest of the working world."
Sadly, there's no room in Jackie's piece to highlight one female executive who is paid rather well herself. Step forward Carolyn McCall, who trousered a bonus of £385,000 last year on top of a £424,000 salary, in her role as chief executive of, er, the Guardian Media Group.