What Tony Hall needs to do to save the BBC
As the new BBC director general starts this week, Raymond Snoddy explains what he will need to do to help save a corporation undergoing one of the worst crises in its long history.
Until this week you could justifiably claim that Tony Hall has played a blinder – just by agreeing to become the next director-general of the BBC.
By saying “yes” he saved the chairmanship of Lord Patten and steadied morale in an organisation in shock from the Savile/Newsnight scandals.
He was seen as the right person to turn to in a crisis with general, though not universal, acclaim both inside and outside the BBC. He dealt with the prima donnas of the Royal Opera House and during his watch as head of BBC News there had been no outstanding scandals or crises ahead of the BBC’s normal batting average.
That was then. Now Lord Hall is in post and he has to deliver across a wide range of fronts with more Savile embarrassment to come in the shape of the report from Dame Janet Smith.
On his first day in office Hall was smooth, fluent and accomplished in the round of television interviews and said most of the right things, although unsurprisingly at this stage there was more rhetoric than substance.
He was also unnecessarily kind to the snappers by obliging with a series of silly poses which will now be used endlessly against him.
The honeymoon period, though intense, could be short and might rapidly run out by the autumn, if not before, when he unveils his blueprint for the future of the Corporation. It will have to be pretty damned good and avoid the circumlocutions and hollow and bogus phrases so beloved of his predecessors.
Not every British broadcaster is a member of the Tony Hall fan club. Some point out that he was, after all, an integral part of the hated Birt regime at the Corporation.
Former director-general Greg Dyke likes to point out that when he was appointed, Hall came fourth in the contest behind Michael Lynton, who later became head of Sony Pictures, and Mark Byford.
As Dyke has noted, Hall failed to get the job next time round too and didn’t even apply this time. For most people, however, there will be a small prayer that Hall is finally the right person in the job after Lord Patten’s star pick – George Entwistle.
Apart from the legacy of the Savile/Newsnight crises, the problems Hall now faces are well known and will not go away.
They range from the continuing industrial relations impact of 2,000 job losses and the 20% budget cuts flowing from the frozen licence fee to a culture of bullying in some parts of the organisation and the silo mentality among management, as identified by the Pollard inquiry.
The Corporation needs new directors of both television and news and within a year has to be beginning to put together the case for a new 10-year Royal Charter.
Here politics will play a key role. If George Osborne is still around he will want a much smaller BBC – something he couldn’t get last time because of the urgent need to reach a deal on public spending cuts.
A Labour Government would be more sympathetic in principle to the BBC but Hall and his strategy adviser, former Culture Secretary James Purnell, will still face an up-hill struggle to get a raise in real terms.
It will be so easy for any Government facing financial constraints to impose continuing downward pressure on the BBC’s finances simply by pegging the licence fee in cash terms.
The argument will have to be made that broadcasting is one of the few industries in which the UK still excels and that despite the rise and rise of Sky the BBC is still at the heart of that achievement and should be encouraged rather than penalised.
Personnel problems can be solved relatively easily. After a strong performance on the Olympics, the acting director of Television, Roger Mosey, is surely the obvious candidate for the job if he wants it.
Given what has gone before, an external voice might be best to run BBC news and James Harding, who was so unreasonably defenestrated as editor of The Times, presumably on the orders of Rupert Murdoch, could be persuaded to accept the challenge even without knowledge of television.
It is surprising that Hall has apparently decided he does not need a deputy to help run such a sprawling and complex organisation. The last person to think that was George Entwistle.
As for Tony Hall’s eventual future it will depend on the answers to the seven “Hows” and the one “What” outlined in his opening email to staff on day one.
Most involve an element of wish-fulfilment.
How do you build “an ever more creative and dynamic organisation where the most creative talents wish to work?”
Actually most creative talents wish to work in the independent sector where they are free from the dead hand of BBC bureaucracy and have a chance of becoming millionaires without the need to buy lottery tickets.
Then there are the old questions about how to make more of the BBC brand and content in the global marketplace and finding out what are the next big trends in technology and consumption that we need to grasp “as we did with BBC Online and iPlayer.”
Don’t forget how to improve what it is like to work at the BBC and perhaps above all else meeting all those ambitions “within our means.”
At least Tony Hall struck the right note by asserting that as it moved towards its centenary year in 2022 the BBC needed to be “self-confident and optimistic about the future” and mindful of the fact that the organisation produces “brilliant programmes and content day in day out.”
Yes of course. Absolutely.
But then the new DG took off in a flight of fancy.
“There can be no complacency but I firmly believe with imagination and hard work the BBC’s best days lie ahead of us,” said Hall.
Now if he were to make that wish come true he really would be a miracle worker rather than merely a safe pair of hands to clear up a mess of historic proportions.