Gerard Mansell

Gerard Mansell, who died at the weekend, has probably indirectly given me more fun than any other BBC executive.

Born and educated in Paris, this small dapper man was one half of a duo that reshaped Auntie's UK radio services in the late 60s.  Given licence by Director General Hugh Carleton Greene, Gerard and Frank Gillard transformed the Light Programme, Home Service and Third Programme into Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4, and set the hare that was to be BBC local radio running.  I tracked, more often from bed than anywhere else, the changing shape of Radio 1 from my sixth form to university, and the development of its news service Newsbeat (a mash-up of pop magazine Scene and Heard with US news radio styles).  It was obvious to me it was THE place (trendy, huh ?) to work, and I got there, first on attachment in 1974, and later on staff for nearly eight years. It was fun.  I met Gerard on a plane to Toronto for an EBU-NANBA radio news conference - and he explained how the news service was crucial to differentiate Radio 1 from the "pirate" stations it competed with, and more or less wiped out; so he could genuinely claim to be "the man who invented Newsbeat". (There are, of course, many other claimants).

But, as Chief of the Home Service, Gerard was also big on change there. Carleton Greene had already moved the Nine O'Clock News to Ten (and added reporting and interviews in the first known outbreak of "news and current affairs".)  Gerard followed by creating The World At One, and much of the tenor of Radio 4 which remains today. As a part author of Broadcasting in the 70s, he was at the centre of the firestorm over the changes - particularly in closing down the powerful features department (outer office "The George"), taking most "talk" out of The Third Programme in the change to Radio 3.


Opponents of his handiwork called him "The Butcher of the BBC". One wag characterised his Radio 4 schedule thus: "The trend is for it to develop into one continuous programme called "Jack de Manio Today Out Of This Week At One with The World and William Hardcastle's Womans' Hour at Home This Afternoon with Monty Modlyn" .  They'd have been more shocked if Gerard had gone ahead with his intention to end "The Archers", as he revealed recently. 

Gerard moved upwards from 4 very quickly, and then back to his beloved External Broadcasting, becoming the first Managing Director of the renamed World Service - the scene of many more stories, and battles, fought, won and, only occasionally, lost.  You'll read them in proper obituaries.

The stitching together of news and current affairs in radio in general has been an surgical operation that's only been partially successful - the limbs may be together, but the different mindsets of how the beast should work survive separately.  This leads to much fanciful posturing, and the occasional heated internal conversation, which, after Newsbeat, has given me immense amusement over the years.   Thanks, Gerry.