Assistant gardener

Jay Hunt, former Controller BBC1, has a new friend to share gardening leave with, before they both move to Channel 4.  George Dixon, in charge of scheduling across BBC Vision, has been hired as Head of Channel Management at C4, to replace Rosemary Newell.  Of course, Jay will have taken no part in the process - part of the requirement of "gardening leave".  But Dixon will report to Jay, who is allowed to start as Chief Creative Officer in January.

Dixon knows where the BBC TV bodies are buried. He joined in 1996 as a Commissioning Assistant and went on to become Deputy Scheduler on BBC ONE in 1997. He moved to Daytime scheduling in 2001, and was moved to BBC2 later that year, working to Controllers Jane Root and Roly Keating. In 2006, he was appointed by Peter Fincham to run BBC1 schedules, before Jana Bennett elevated him still further to run scheduling across the group.

Dixon's notable interventions include stripping the Simpsons across the BBC2 early evening schedule five nights a week; launching 24 in a 10.00pm slot on Sunday; and re-launching Top Gear at 8.00pm on Sundays. At BBC1 he took a hardline on scheduling Strictly against XFactor, until sat on by Sir Michael Lyons this season. There's also a bit of trumpet blowing on the C4 announcement of George's move: "He was personally responsible for the scheduling and commissioning strategy for BBC1 and in this time created and implemented the strategy that turned around the channel's performance on Wednesday and Sunday. BBC1 has now overtaken ITV1 as the most popular network in peaktime for the first time in history".   I wonder who wrote that.