Dame Jayne-Anne

The BBC Board has lighted upon The Virgin Banker as its business brains, replacing Sir Damon Buffini. At 6ft 2in sans heels, she'll measure up to DG Matt Brittin. 

Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, 65, starts her four-year term this week. She was born in Stourbridge; father was an electrical engineer, mother one of the first female bank tellers. She moved to Culford School in Bury St Edmunds as one of the early girls allowed into the independent boys' school. She left at 17, and spent a year in Diss unemployment office, getting a job there after signing-on. Thence to a BA in History at Royal Holloway College, where she met husband-to-be Ashok. They married while she was training as accountants at Ernst Whinney, precursor to EY; Jayne then joined Norwich Union. 

Then: “I met someone that worked at Virgin, and I had just been reading about Richard Branson and the way in which he did business differently, and I said “I’d love to be part of it” . In 1995 she became one of the founders of Virgin Direct, moving to Edinburgh.   In 2002, after six rounds of IVF, she gave birth to daughter Amy. There followed six more rounds and post-natal depression before conceding Amy would be an only child. Jayne-Anne worked for Fred Goodwin at RBS before a return to Virgin Money as CEO from 2007 to 2018.  She was a trustee of Sentebale, Prince Harry's charity, from 2008 to 2011.

In 2012 Jayne Anne led Virgin Money’s acquisition of Northern Rock before listing the combined business in 2014. In 2018, the combined Virgin Money business was sold, and Jayne-Anne joined Salesforce from 2019 to 2021. She left Salesforce to focus on her own fintech, Snoop, which was sold to Vanquis Bank in July 2023.

She's been chair of Dumfries House, still hq of The King's Foundation, and Chair of The Prince's Foundation. She says she know the lyrics to every Queen song. 

r & d

Matt Brittin, arriving from a tech company that's ready to spend $60 billion dollars a year on R&D, is presiding over a cut at the BBC. It's yet another sign that the current punishing round of budget slashing is systematic, with no protection for any particular department.  Divisions are taking out 'runts', rather than thinking strategically. 

Jatin Aythora is departing as Director of R&D and will not be replaced.  Bill Thompson, Head of Future Value Research & Principal Research Engineer, BBC R&D says this does not mean the department is being disbanded. "We are in the middle of a process of finalising the structure and operating model of the massive new Media Tech division, and we still have savings to sort out."

Perhaps Jatin felt threatened by the arrival in June 2025 of Manon Dave, on a deal which accorded him the title of Head of Future World Design.  A BBC spokesman said  "A smaller central R&D team will focus on long-term innovation, industry standards, future technologies and partnerships. R&D expertise remains highly valued across the BBC and the wider industry, and continues to play an important role in delivering our public service mission."

Who's running the BBC ?

 

Susannah Storey, 53, (BA Oriel, Oxford) is the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.  Here's a summary of her BBC meetings to the end of June.

9th April Incoming BBC DG Matt Brittin

11th May Incoming BBC DG Matt Brittin

15th May BBC DG Tim Davie

21st May, BBC Head of Future World Design Manon Dave

27th May BBC Non-executive director Jody Ford

28th May BBC Board chair Samir Shah and his deputy Damon Buffini

29th May BBC Board Senior non-executive Caroline Thomson

8th June BBC DG Matt Brittin

Together again

Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg and Kemi Badenoch - 2026 editions

11th January, 29th March, 3rd May, 17th May, 19th July, 4th October, 1st November.

Extra hands

Probably the last chance for the survival of Radio 4 Extra is in the hands of the BBC's non-executive directors.  They may have already signed it off; minutes of their proceedings now lag for months. It was the BBC Trust who saved 6Music. 

The non-execs are Caroline Thomson, Muriel Gray, Robbie Gibb, Michael Plaut, Michael Smyth, Jody Ford and Marinella Soldi, if campaigners would care to drop any of them a line.  The core petition to Save 4 Extra is now up to 16,500.

The continuation of a linear channel as a lead display case for a national archive of radio programming is the very definition of essential public service broadcasting. Maybe even tech gurus like Manon Dave will recognise it as entirely parallel to his "Las Vegas" spin button for finding surprising stuff on iPlayer. 

When will  Director of Speech Mohit Bakaya be made available to defend the closure ?  Here's his position from March this year... 

Mohit Bakaya, the controller of BBC Radio 4, told me they are producing content for audiences who may never hear it on the radio station, but will consume it exclusively on digital platforms. https://t.co/Cdb6jMvF4Y

— Colm Flynn (@colmflynnire) March 24, 2026

Bits

 BBC online news today

Hearing loss

With population figures updated, many radio stations are claiming improvements, but, in truth, most figures for the most recent quarter of listening are flat. 

These are worrying times for BBC Radio Wales, Scotland, Ulster, BBC Local Radio and 5Live, when 'integration' is in the air - though it may be more about management than output.

Radio Wales' weekly reach is down 3% year on year, and average hours per listener down 23%.

Radio Cymru's weekly reach is up 16.5% year on year; average hours per listener are spookily down 16.5%.

Radio Scotland's weekly reach is down 5% year on year and average hours per listener down 10%. 

Radio Ulster's weekly reach is up 9.5% year on year; average hours per listener are down 7.2%. 

BBC Local Radio in England's weekly reach is down 5.3%; average hours per listener are up 10.4%.

Radio 5Live's weekly reach is down 2.4% year on year; average hours per listener are up 10%. 

Wrongly-condemned station Radio 4 was down 5.4%  in its weekly reach year on year, with average hours per listener up 10%. 

Inspiration

 

Left: BBC interim Director of Nations Rhuanedd Richards from the BBC Executive Board website. Right, Rhuanedd from Linkedin this week, noting with pleasure that she has been nominated as an "Inspiring Woman" by the BBC's Next Generation Committee. Rhuanedd is Executive Sponsor of the committee, so that's grand. 

The Committee, selected by the management for 12 months at a time, "provides an advisory function for the Executive Committee, in particular to consider the challenges facing the BBC from the perspective of younger audiences."   It would be good to see their take on the cuts....

Keep listening

I'm all for petitions and campaigns against daft BBC management decisions. Remember, the campaign to 'save' 6Music from an Executive move to close won the support of the BBC Trust in July 2010.  The 2023 move on the BBC Singers was 'paused' after just two weeks of campaigning and a 120,000 signature petition. 

There is another form of 'citizen action' available to those aggrieved by the latest planned cuts. Quarterly audience listening figures are due out next Thursday, and it's too late to influence them. But the next quarter covers 21st September to 20th December, with results reported mid-February; plenty of time to highlight your dedication to programmes and networks facing the axe. 

If you are lucky enough to be part of the Ipsos listening panel, then you have seven day diaries to fill in.  But your connections are also counted by the BBC when you listen via BBC Sounds. So maybe concentrate your pre-Christmas commands to Alexa and Google speakers, even when just passing, rather than your steam radio. And perhaps, if you have Sounds on your car audio, use that rather than DAB/FM.  Then we call all write to Samir Shah about Radio 4 Extra/The Midnight News and You and Yours and ask for transparency about the figures. 

Minders

The flow of minutes from the various BBC Board Committees remains erratic. We now have notes from the Editorial Standards Committee meeting of July. Absent were interim Director of News Jonathan Munro and interim Director of Nations Rhuanedd Richards, but the remaining crowd congratulated themselves on coverage of the May local elections and keeping an eye on AI in journalism. 

At this stage, they note they're still trying to find someone to lead a review of Middle East coverage  "discussions with its preferred candidate for leadership of the Editorial Review of the Middle East were taking place on the terms of reference and timescale."   This review has been in gestation since January 2025 - one year and nine months ago. 

Another too-little, too-late action from the sharp minds: "The Committee approved the proposal for a review of the BBC’s short-form video content." This horse has bolted....