Former BBC executive and DAB pioneer David Witherow has died, aged 82. Born in Birmingham, he went to King Edward's, then Cambridge University, and joined the Press Association in 1960 as a graduate trainee. Three years later he was in the BBC World Service Newsroom, and rising swiftly through the ranks, to Editor of External Services News in 1972.
He moved to BBC Television News in 1977, editing the early evening BBC2 show, Newsday, fronted by Richard Kershaw and Michael Charlton. Then, after a spell in "central management", he was appointed head of the Monitoring Service at Caversham in 1980. He returned to the World Service in 1985 as Controller of Resources and Administration and was appointed Deputy Managing Director of the World Service in 1989, supporting John Tusa in something of a late golden period for the service.
After retiring from the BBC in 1994, David Witherow worked as consultant on the implementation of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), in charge of the start-up of the BBC's DAB services in 1995-96. He was elected the first President of the World DAB Forum in October 1995, and a member of the Steering Committee of the UK National DAB Forum from 1995 to 1997.
In 1998 he was appointed as a member of the Radio Authority, and, again moved up to be Executive Chair from 2003, just as it was about to be replaced by Ofcom at the end of that year. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Radio Academy.
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Thank you for this post. David Witherow was in charge of the Monitoring Service when I joined it. A rather formal and aloof figure, especially to a very junior member of staff such as myself, but he saw the need for change and initiated the service's first major modernisation programme since the war. Are you aware of any other obituaries of him?
ReplyDeleteNot that I've seen yet; though he had many fans in many roles, so I suspect there will some to come
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