Dame Colette Bowe, 68 (Notre Dame Liverpool, Bsc/PhD Economics Queen Mary London, and MSc Economics LSE). Civil servant who left after the Westland Affair, but came back big in public life eventually to chair Ofcom. It might not help, but she says she owes her entire career to Maurice Peston, Robert's dad, who let her switch to economics from French at Queen Mary. Liverpool fan, who also plays the cello.
Last year, she came out in favour of 'contestability' - "I have got sympathy with the idea that some more of the funding currently available for public service broadcasting should be contestable. Because on the whole I am on the side of the people in the sector who believe that what we need is even more competition and dynamism and innovation than we have got."
Dawn Airey, 54 (Kelly College Tavistock and BA Geography from Girton, Cambridge) has moved via ITV and Sky from CEO Channel 5 ("films, football and f**king") to senior vice-president Yahoo, EMEA. Nicknames have included Scairey Airey and Zulu Dawn.
In 2009, while still at 5, she mused to the Daily Telegraph thus “Perhaps the BBC should go back to having a couple of big broadcast channels, a couple of radio stations with a clearly defined remit and a reduced licence fee to support that. And all the other things that it may do are still there but you have to pay for them."
Shazam executive chairman Andrew Fisher, 45 (Millfield and BSc Economics, Loughborough University) took the music-identfying-app to new levels of second-screen advertising, with investors like Al Gore and Carlos Slim. I can find no record of opinions about the BBC.
Arts Council England boss Darren Henley OBE, 42 (St Edmund's Canterbury and BA Politics, Hull University) spent 20 years working his way up at Classic FM, from overnight newsreader to MD. Gilingham FC season ticket holder.
Last year, while still at Classic, he wrote to the Telegraph thus: "Without a penny of public money, Classic FM reaches an audience of around 5.5 million people every week, over two and a half times more than its subsidised competitor, Radio 3. Meanwhile, Radio 3 and the BBC orchestras are handed £83.5 million of public licence-fee funding each year. Mr [Roger] Wright’s recent editorial changes move Radio 3 even further away from its previous distinctive position... The BBC appears intent on moving its network into the space occupied by a commercial radio competitor in a market of only two stations."
Johnston Press chief executive Ashley Highfield, 49 (Elizabeth College, Guernsey, RGS High Wycombe and BA Business Computing Systems, City University). Begetter of the BBC's failed Digital Media Initiative and launcher of the iPlayer, his current position is lead newspaper attack dog against BBC websites, in particular local stuff.
In February he wrote "When I first read the BBC’s Future of News report last week I’m not sure what depressed me most - the inflammatory language used, the misguided sentiment behind it, or the fact that the BBC intends parking a tank on every local lawn and offering its version of hyper local news controlled from London W1A."
Former Shine Group chief executive Alex Mahon, 41 (St Margaret's Edinburgh, PhD Physics, Imperial, Harvard Business School). Shine was the child of Elizabeth Murdoch.
Digital entrepreneur Lopa Patel, 51 (BTEC Tottenham College of Technology and BSc Manchester). Her wesbites include asianpowercouples.com, redhotcurry.com; and she's a founding trustee of DiversityUK. In that role, she's been on BBC World and BBC London this year, perhaps with a little help from Curzon PR.
— Lopa Patel (@lopapatel) June 1, 2015
Journalism
professor Stewart Purvis CBE, 67 (Dulwich College and BA Exeter) a former editor-in-chief of ITN, joined the BBC as one of its first news trainees in 1969. He's a member of the board of Channel 4, which may prove a conflict.In 2000, while at ITN, he threatened to take the BBC to the OFT and European authorities for distributing online news for free.
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