Don’t just be a businessperson – be a creative visionary

Former BBC editor and presenter

Director general, we need you to give us a dream. At the moment we only seem to have business plans, which is not surprising since your board is stuffed with businesspeople. Not many creative dreamers there. Your predecessor needed to slim down the organisation, to try to find new sources of revenue and prepare for a digital future without the licence fee. All this at a time of massively increased competition, from Netflix to GB News; the flight of children and young people to YouTube; increasing opposition to paying the licence fee; and while working under the critical eye of unsympathetic ministers, ever-ready to put the boot in.

Tim Davie was not well served by some of his executives who let him down, but because he tried to do everything, he had to take the rap. I think he was an outstanding chief executive, but a director general needs to be more than that. They need to be a visionary.

You need to win the public service argument with your critics even more than with your supporters, and, so far, the BBC’s contribution to the charter debate has been a disgrace. Far from leading it, the corporation has been largely silent, letting others make the political weather.

It is no longer tenable, in my view, to say you should give everyone something. With diminishing income, that would mean giving everyone less and less, and some minorities nothing at all. You need to prioritise in favour of public service, and spell out what that is.

Be brave in the face of critics and, above all, be proud of our BBC

Guardian columnist and BBC social affairs editor from 1988 to 1995

It takes bravery to step into so many dead men’s shoes. Hold on to that and be ready to fight the BBC’s enemies every step of the way. Refuse to be blown off course by any error made in some part of the vast output: blunders will happen, of course. Luckily, Labour, drawing up the new charter, is in essence a friend, but explosive political rows erupt often under Labour governments, vis Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.

Be brave inside W1A. Give people their head, allow risk, remove too many layers of nervous scrutiny and speed up commissioning where delays leave an industry for ever awaiting BBC........

© The Guardian