Head ache

Quite how one person is expected to oversee not just radio but also ‘arts, music, learning and children’s departments’ was not made clear by the BBC when it announced the stratospheric rise to power within the corporation of James Purnell as the new director of everything that’s not TV or light entertainment. You may recall that Purnell was once culture minister under the Labour government and in 2013 became head of strategy at the BBC, an appointment that at the time was excused (given Purnell’s lack of programme-making experience) by Tony Hall, the director-general, as ‘of course not editorial’. But this new job is very much in charge of overall editorial content; it signalled the departure of veteran broadcaster Helen Boaden from her post as director of radio, now seemingly superseded by Purnell’s grandiose new empire. Radio, the BBC’s most valuable asset (in cultural terms, if not financial), is now at the mercy of a man who for 20 years inhabited the corridors of Westminster and since then has been preoccupied with positioning the BBC in the new digital world rather than with what actually goes on behind the mixing desks and soundproofed walls of Broadcasting House.