Lord Puttnam, one of the front-runners for the vacant BBC chairman role, has ruled himself out of the race to take up where Michael Grade left off.
The deadline for applications was on Wednesday and Lord Puttnam has revealed, in an article in this week’s
Spectator, that he has not applied for the role, despite being approached by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the body overseeing the recruitment process.
Lord Puttnam said: “I will continue to be a vocal supporter of the BBC and all that, at its best, it continues to represent.
“As an institution it is far from perfect, but it does continue to offer the possibility of an eventual victory for sanity over nihilism in the evolution of the nation’s media output.”
“It’s the right decision for me. The bottom line is that having reached a point in my life at which, living in Ireland, I have never been happier I couldn’t find a way of justifying the possibility of upsetting that.”
Michael Grade left the BBC last November to take the position of executive chairman of ITV (see BBC Chairman Jumps Ship To ITV Top Job).
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