Good heavens. Danny Cohen is to leave the BBC in November.
Long tipped as a future DG, it's possible he's off to acquire external experience for future candidacy. But it's a deuced unsettling time to change horses at the top of BBC TV.
Why now ? Well, the luvvies' letter was not an unalloyed PR success, and Lord Hall is writing to Jesse Norman at the DCMS Select Committee to explain more. BBC Television may be a less attractive place to run, if, as planned, BBC Studios become a separate division under Peter Salmon. There can be no continuing reason for Danny to run a 26-strong Television board under these circumstances, and sensible job analysis would say his successor ought to earn less than £327,800.
It is possible that Lord Hall's promised restructuring might not leave room for both Danny and James Purnell, though that would required a display of radicalism beyond most people's expectations of the DG. Lord Hall will have a number of reasonable internal candidates to consider if the vacancy at tv does arise - not least Charlotte Moore at BBC1, who nurtured the Bake-Off and didn't buy The Voice.
Danny's move to the Executive tier, from May 2013, hasn't been without bumps; one hears that his tv colleagues have fallen a little out of love with their former prodigy. His Twitter account shows the stratospheric level of his current circle - J.K.Rowling, Will I.Am, Stacey Dooley and Robbie Savage. Has he sorted a new berth already ?
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Gawd, not Danny for DG - he needs to smarten up and get a shave. Though a couple of years away from the Beeb would stand him in good stead, look where it got Thomo at C4...
ReplyDelete...and he returned with face fungus.
ReplyDeleteThinking about it, most of us would return for £327,800 - as most of us were made redundant a few years back on less than £32,780 pa.
ReplyDelete