Dear Director General
Many congratulations on getting the best job in world broadcasting. Enjoy it as much as you can, while you can; in my 46 years at the Beeb, few directors-general have left as they would have chosen. Several were forced out before their time was up — usually as the result of bad behaviour by governments, Conservative and Labour.
Mark Thompson made it through to the end, but I imagine he’s glad to go. His last two years have been overshadowed by a licence-fee agreement which has turned out to be harsher than anything the BBC has ever previously experienced. The shock of it all has become a part of the lives of every one of us. Making good programmes costs money; cut the money, and the quality visibly suffers.
As a result, people who work for the BBC have become profoundly disheartened, and your first and most pressing job as director general will be to do something about that.
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