Friday, December 15, 2017

It's Fran

Congratulations to Fran Unsworth (St Dominic's High School for Girls, Stoke on Trent, and drama at Manchester University), selected by Lord Hall as the new Director of BBC News. She's had a go at the job before, acting up during the Pollard Inquiry at the end of 2012 - when Helen Boaden was asked to 'step aside'. (Roger Mosey says acting DG Tim Davie asked him first, and he said no). One of Fran's first actions was an internal memo to staff attempting to stem leaks. “It would be helpful if some of our problems were not played out publically across social media and in the pages of the national press.” The memo was immediately leaked.

Fran was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, one of three girls - her 60th birthday comes on 29 December, if staff are contemplating gifts. Contemporaries at Manchester included Rik Mayall. Post-university she joined Radio Bristol ("virtually my first job"), and moved to Radio Leicester. London then beckoned, and Fran passed through network radio with Newsbeat, The World at One/ PM, and a period as radio's Washington producer.

The next step was with bi-media Newsgathering, on home news coverage, and spells with the tv One O'Clock and Six O'Clock bulletins.

In 2000, BBC DG Greg Dyke ordered a review of political output from BBC; the job fell to Fran, and led to the cancellation of On the Record, Despatch Box and Westminster Live for new brands of rather similar programmes.

In 2005 Fran became the first female Head of Newsgathering, then with 800 staff.  The step up to News' top job, as a 'clean pair of hands' in the aftermath of Savile/Newsnight, continued as Helen Boaden moved to radio, and until James Harding arrived in August 2013. Harding made Fran his deputy (involving quite a lot of daily grind, as Harding went looking for 'The Future of News'), and added the title of Director of World Service Group - another female first. There, she's been trying to spend surprise Foreign Office money, whilst domestic news stutters on the delivery of savings. She'll have to balance the books now. 

Other tasks left in Harding's in-tray; implementing new terms and conditions; sorting out talent pay - not just for women, but between some grumpy males; seeing if someone can make the new weather system work; moving the whole division to a new newsroom computer; choosing a Newsnight editor, a head of English regions and a new Number 2.


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