Beat-en ?

The Mail uses some interesting language to squeeze a story out of the BBC's hunt to find someone to run yoof-oriented news service Newsbeat as it moves to Birmingham. 

The paper 'understands' that Marcus Ryder, a sort of one-man ginger group on media diversity, was interviewed three times and was 'a preferred candidate' (a phrase more often used when presenting a new BBC Chairman to the Culture Select Committee). He is currently Head of External Consultancies and Visiting Professor at the Sir Lenny Henry Centre of Media Diversity, Birmingham University, an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Journalism at The University of Sussex, and Chair of RADA Council. This year he returned from jobs in China; he ran current affairs programmes for BBC Scotland for eight years. 

Even at Executive Editor level, three interviews seems one too many; the Mail suggests that Director General Tim Davie overruled Jamie Angus, Controller of News Output, over the job. Odd for Jamie to tangle with the DG over something like this, with the big job in News vacant.