For reasons not entirely clear, the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, appears bent on bringing down Tim Davie, the director-general (DG) of the BBC.
It is an alarming turn of events for a DG who valiantly fought off threats by Boris Johnson’s government to “whack the BBC” by slashing its funding and undermining its credibility. Back then, Davie must have viewed Labour as an ally.
Previously unflappable under pressure, he now looks vulnerable.
After the BBC’s disastrous Glastonbury live stream of death chants against Israeli soldiers, Nandy told MPs that “when you have one editorial failure, it’s something that must be gripped. When you have several, it becomes a problem of leadership”.
She told an interviewer she was “exasperated” by the BBC and asked why “nobody was fired” for the broadcast of a Gaza documentary, narrated by the son of a Hamas minister. Invited to express confidence in Davie, she pointedly declined.
Any attempt by the Government to unseat a BBC DG is disturbing. Not just because it threatens the independence of the national broadcaster, but because Davie remains the right leader for the organisation at a pivotal time, when the end of the traditional licence fee is being discussed.
Negotiations are underway between the Government and the BBC to decide how the corporation is funded beyond its current charter, which expires in 2027. Nandy says the licence fee is “regressive” and she is thinking “radically” about alternatives. Davie backs “modernisation and reform” but has drawn some red lines. “Advertising or subscription don’t pass the test of building a universal public service,” he said in Salford recently.
The tension between them is palpable. Some suggest ideological differences are at play, and the MP for Wigan has an intuitive dislike for a former marketeer for PepsiCo who unsuccessfully stood as a Tory in council elections 30 years ago. This would be simplistic and falsely represents a DG who has made impartiality his watchword during his five years in post.
Davie has multiple attributes that make him suited to running the BBC. That was the case when he stepped in as acting DG in 2012 amid the Jimmy Savile crisis, bringing calm to a traumatised staff. It was true when he was hired in 2020, just before the second lockdown, with the task of “saving” the BBC in the face of unprecedented competition from big tech and a seismic shift in media consumption habits.
Headhunted into the BBC by Mark Thompson, the most successful DG this century, Davie is a Cambridge English Literature graduate with a golden CV in business. He once ran a marathon in the North Pole before flying to run another in the Sahara, so he is not easily fazed. But he has everyman qualities stemming from an upbringing in Croydon, where his father was a drinks salesman and his mother a psychiatric nurse. “My base wiring is Blue Peter, suburban Britain,” he once said.
The BBC must connect with younger audiences, and Davie, 58, is not a patrician DG. He often walks the corridors in trainers and has championed greater staff diversity. Yet his instincts are respectful of conservative values, so he restored “Rule Britannia” to the Last Night of the Proms and challenged Gary Lineker’s social media activism.
His leadership skills are not in doubt. While head of BBC Studios, the BBC’s commercial arm, Davie grew revenues and learned of the global pressures on the corporation’s future. He turned down running the Premier League to lead the national broadcaster and has been offered better-paid positions in the tech sector because he embraces innovation.
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While the DG is the BBC’s editor-in-chief and ultimately responsible for editorial failings, Davie has been badly let down.
His senior executives failed in their oversight of MasterChef’s presenter scandal, the lack of transparency over the Gaza documentary, and the decision to live-platform an activist punk group. It is their heads that should roll, not his.
Change is needed at the BBC, and Nandy wants to be the Secretary of State who gave it “long-term sustainability”. She has family roots in public broadcasting – her mother ran Granada TV’s newsroom. Her vitriol over a “series of catastrophic mistakes” might be partly driven by Labour’s desire not to be outflanked by Reform UK in support for Israel. And by targeting Davie, she hopes to get her way over the new charter.
Like Davie, Nandy is suited to her brief. But Labour bullying the BBC recalls the Blairite assault that forced out a DG and a chairman in 2004.
The BBC cannot afford another leadership vacuum, and I’m not sure it can improve on the incumbent. If it is to have a viable future, this pair needs a constructive dialogue.
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