Tim Davie: Who is new BBC director-general?
Tim Davie, the current chief executive of BBC Studios, has been appointed director-general of the corporation, succeeding Tony Hall.
The 53-year-old first joined the BBC in 2005 as director of marketing, before heading its music and audio division – overseeing major brands like Radio 1. Just weeks after he entered the latter role he was forced to address the scandal of Jonathan Ross’s and Russell Brand’s abusive phone calls to the actor Andrew Sachs, which eventually led to a £150,000 Ofcom fine for the corporation.
His controversial decision to scrap 6 Music was later reversed.
From radio, the Cambridge-educated executive moved to the directorship of BBC Worldwide, which later merged with the production team to become BBC Studios – the corporation’s commercial arm which exports its products around the world.
Mr Davie has previously had a taste of the top job. He stepped in as acting director-general in late 2012, following the resignation of George Entwhistle over a Newsnight broadcast that wrongly implicated a Conservative peer in child abuse.
Lord Hall was appointed to the position permanently on 22 November 2012, 12 days after Mr Davie took the reins, though the commercial man stayed in post for four months.
Mr Davie lacks the journalistic background of his predecessor, having described himself previously as “a man from corporate life”. After leaving university – the first of his family to take higher education, according to a Royal Television Society profile – he joined the multinational Procter and Gamble, and later worked as vice president of marketing at PepsiCo Europe.
His commercial nous will be in high demand as the BBC negotiates changes to the licence fee that have already led to warnings of massive cutbacks.
Outside work, the father of three is known as an avid long-distance runner. He has taken on the London Marathon and was fourth out of just 38 finishers in the North Pole Marathon in 2009. He has also run the gruelling 156-mile Marathon des Sables in the Sahara desert.
