back to article BBC Newsnightmare: Opera chief brought in as new DG

The BBC has brought in its one-time head of news to succeed George Entwistle as the Corporation's new director-general, after the previous incumbent lasted just 54 days in the job. Tony Hall, who is currently the boss of the Royal Opera House, has been hired for the £450,000 per year gig, the BBC Trust confirmed in a statement …

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  1. AndrueC Silver badge
    Joke

    > hired for the £450,000 per year gig

    Don't you mean £450,000 for two month's work?

    1. exexpat

      was actually more - you forgot his two months paypacket at around 60k so total for two months was £510k.

      Which is outrageous for a public sector job.

      1. AndrueC Silver badge
        Happy

        What we need about now is a new discussion on the future of the license fee.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @exexpat

        What is an acceptable upper limit for any public sector job then?

        1. I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

          Re: @exexpat

          If it is anything like what the actual factory grunt is getting it is part time work at minimal pay. But a temp factory hand is expected to make things. not break things.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Meh

        "you forgot his two months paypacket at around 60k so total for two months was £510k."

        I think that you haven't put yourself in his shoes. Imagine you get promoted at work, in your large conglomerate, and get the top job. Obviously you've not been the public face of Bigcorp before, so that's all a bit new to you. There's an onging scandal rumbling on, driven by events that happened two decades earlier, and the decision to shelve a product (the sort of decision being made all the time in any such business).

        Then, somewhere in the bowels of the large and complex business you work for, a junior employee fucks up, and a gasket blows, causing mucho damage. You're barely eight weeks into the job, and you are pressured to resign, before you've even left a buttock impression in the leather chair. Now, would you think, "Ooh yes, I'll resign without compensation, for something that I certainly am accountable for, even if I've not been truly responsible for, and haven't had the chance to address". I don't think you would. I think you'd be going (like I would) "Whine, whine, whine, it's so not fair!" and you'd want to get some form of compensation for being hounded out of an office you've not yet made your own.

        Possibly he'll walk into another job, but he's not going to walk into anything as majestic as the DG role, and it is possible that he may never get another senior job because he is (for the most part) unfairly tainted.

        My personal views are not terribly supportive of the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation, but Entwhistle walked into a shit storm, was not allowed the opportunity to address it, and that's his career mangled. I've worked with somebody who had something like an "Entwhistle" experience, and five years after the event they've still not worked, and probably will never work again in a normal salaried job.

        If they didn't want to pay him off, then they should have required him to stay and made him sort it out.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    One day

    One day perhaps we'll find this kind of establishment post occupied by a man or woman whose background is not a single sex private school, someone who has grown up somewhere closer to the real world than so many of these characters have experienced in their eary years. Hey but at least its not another Etonian appointment.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One day

      no chance!

      A state school education?

      Real world experience?

      Very little chance of that ever happening, look at the prats running the country.... this is just the BBC!

    2. dogged

      Re: One day

      Greg Dyke, you mean?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One day

      Why is a school's sexual orientation grounds for discrimination?

      What is it about where school funding comes from (given neither state nor public schools are funded by the students) which disqualifies students from holding particular jobs many, many years after they have left?

      Have we really relapsed into 70's-style class war?

      1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

        Re: One day

        "Why is a school's sexual orientation grounds for discrimination?".

        It's not, IMO. I've met many people from a variety of schools (private, public, state-funded, single sex and mixed sex). In all, you get people who are brilliant, and you get people who are idiots.

  3. I See Fridges

    Money for nothing?

    Still don't understand why the Beeb had to pay McAlpine given that they never named him.

    1. a cynic writes...

      Re: Money for nothing?

      Because It still counts as libel if they gave out enough information that people could work out who was being talked about. Given that his name was all over the place more or less immediately they did.

      1. Anonymous Custard

        Re: Money for nothing?

        And if I remember correctly they subsequently admitted it was him they were talking about, even though they didn't name him.

  4. Colin Millar
    Flame

    Patten on the run?

    He's the Chair of the trust and he 'wasn't around' for interviewing to the post of DG?

    is it now compulsory at the BBC for everyone to explain how they are not responsible for the things they are paid to be responsible for?

    He should be the next one out the door along with the rest of the trust. The arse-covering, whitewashing responsibility dodging management culture always devolves downwards and this lot are the top of the pile.

    1. Steve Foster

      Re: Patten on the run?

      No, it was _Hall_ who was unavailable for interview last time the DG job was vacant.

      IOW, Entwhistle was at best second choice, and potentially, it could have been Hall getting the fat payoff.

      1. Colin Millar

        Re: Patten on the run?

        Ah - OK I misread that.

        My opinion about poor management culture flowing downhill still stands. The trust should be made to answer for why they have allowed the BBC to slide into such a mire.

      2. Colin Millar
        Headmaster

        Re: Patten on the run? - a pedant explains

        "Patten explained that he hadn't been available during the previous round of interviews that eventually landed Entwistle the job"

        I actually didn't misread that - I read exactly what was written and it is not even ambiguous - the only possible meaning of the sentence is that Patten wasn't available.

        Back to writing school for you Fiveash.

        1. Vic

          Re: Patten on the run? - a pedant explains

          > the only possible meaning of the sentence is that Patten wasn't available.

          Not so.

          You're interpreting "he" as a reflexive. That is one possible meaning, or else it could refer to someone referred to in the previous sentence - namely "the peer", meaning Lord Hall.

          > Back to writing school for you Fiveash

          Back to reading school for you, Millar.

          Vic.

          1. Colin Millar
            Headmaster

            Re: Patten on the run? - a pedant explains

            Yes - so long as "Patten" hadn't been mentioned between "the peer" and "he". You should only use a pronoun to refer to a previous sentence or clause if there isn't a subject in the current sentence or clause which could be the target.

            Back to grammar school for you Vic.

            1. Vic

              Re: Patten on the run? - a pedant explains

              > You should only use a pronoun ...

              Your statement is entirely incorrect.

              Vic.

    2. Luther Blissett

      Re: Patten on the run?

      >> The peer was the only person approached by the trust with an offer to take the DG gig.

      There's Fat Pang in action for you. So while I would not quite say that Pang is on the run right now, if things don't get better PDQ (I won't ask How?) then he will have to walk.

  5. J P
    Coat

    Oh, _that_ Opera... I thought there was an IT angle for a moment...

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Pity the previous DG wasn't called Fox. Could have been a superb headline.

    2. Lars Silver badge
      Pint

      Choked too, until I found out it has some other minor meaning too. Damn you El Reg.

  6. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    HyperRadioProActive ProgramMING ..... New AI BBC Mission

    A Post Modern Aida for the Virtually Real Making, Mr Hall? With NEUKlearer Direction in SMARTR Applications with AIMaster Pilots in Prepared Programs and Planned Projects Prevented Piss Poor Performance.

    Quite necessary for Prima Donna Satisfaction and Joy ....... XSSXXXXTC. Now that is a LOVE dDrug and SuperBug which aint got Enemies and therefore has Hosts of Anonymous Friends and Real Lovers/IMPerfect Angels.

    A Proposal to Energise IntelAIgent Novelty Edutainment via Subliminal Broadbandcast Means and Memes to Present, with a whole new series of platforms for showing alternate realities, the Future in whatever Phorm is to be thought worthy of Virtual Realisation, is a rough first day in the office, Mr Hall. Sorry about that, but you understand. Que Sera, Sera

    Registered Post XSSXXXX121122

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Angel

      Re: HyperRadioProActive ProgramMING ..... New AI BBC Mission

      Here's somebody who's blissed out. Whatever you're on, can I share a lump/sip/snort, or whatever?

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: HyperRadioProActive ProgramMING ..... New AI BBC Mission ..... Projects List

        Whatever one wants is available and always best whenever desireable, Ledswinger.

        And you may have seriously misunderestimated the BBC too.

      2. cortland

        Re: HyperRadioProActive ProgramMING ..... New AI BBC Mission

        Feem desire is NOT to be dwarked at.

  7. Chris Miller

    Pity they didn't ask Greg Dyke

    But I don't suppose he'd want his old job back, anyway.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hopefully he will do something about their tech "journelism"

    That's basically a pen for hire.

    RCJ and his band of merry shills.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: Hopefully he will do something about their tech "journelism"

      I hope he does something about the appalling quality of the news feeds coming out of BBC news now. I tend to read the BBC on their iOS app, and there are so many missing words, misspelled words, truncated paragraphs etc. And it didn't used to be like that 6 months ago.

      1. I Am Spartacus

        No, that's the Gurdiad

        See title

    2. Greg J Preece

      Re: Hopefully he will do something about their tech "journelism"

      Their tech journalism is pretty pathetic. The number of inconsistencies, mistakes, and misunderstandings is pretty bad. It's Gadget Show level.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    >That broadcast led to Entwistle's underdoing

    Do you perhaps mean 'undoing'?

  10. Clyde

    "good broadcaster" is only in their own minds

    I'll take this opportunity to make my own comments about the awful state of journaism at the BBC.

    No in-depth reporting, and when the 24 hour channel came in, I thought that's what it would do.

    Very little quality news reporting from overseas - maybe that's down to the johnny foreigner attitudes that infest London and the southeast nowadays. Unless it's stories from the USA - then they get the full red carpet treatment, hour after hour, day after day.

    Lots of people see bias in their reporting, political bias. Far be it from me to suggest they employ people on the basis of "who you know" - but if the hat fits ....

    The BBC spends a fortune on celebrities and broadcasting that commercial channels do very well - entertainment, sports - and also a fortune on the "period drama" no doubt hugely beneficial to the luvvies who would not get employment anywhere else.

    But what they were set up to do - inform, be a pillar of light and all that - they have forgotten about in recent years.

    Root and branch overhaul, weed out the hangers on, slim down the management, get back to basics. And bring in some professionalism and honesty amongst their workers.

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