Setting the BBC's priorities

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Former director of BBC News and Current Affairs, Ian Hargreaves, outlines how Greg Dyke should steer the BBC safely through the tough times ahead.

The BBC Governors have made a mess of appointing the new director general, exposing the corporation to a prolonged and quite unnecessary round of political suspicion and tension.

One effect of this will be to undermine partially one of the two major achievements of Greg Dyke's predecessor, Sir John Birt.

For it was Sir John who successfully navigated the treacherous political waters of full-tide Thatcherism, when the very existence of a publicly owned BBC was called into doubt inside the Cabinet.

Sir John's political inheritance, however, remains formidable. After more than a decade of fighting to justify the licence fee in principle and struggling to have it keep up with inflation, it looks like the Blair government will soon agree to some form of supplementary licence fee, possibly a tax on digital television sets.

Words and actions

Armed with that, and the pioneer position the BBC has brilliantly taken in digital broadcasting and online services, Greg Dyke inherits a very sound position in the communications industry. What should his priorities be?

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First, Mr Dkye must show through words and actions that he understands and is committed to the public service principle upon which the BBC has been built.

That means focusing heavily upon services which the commercial market will not or cannot provide: on television, on radio and on the Internet.

This will involve painful investment choices and a willingness to take flak when ratings slip against crowd-pulling ITV programmes like Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

It will involve backing the BBC's unrivalled journalistic operation against the instincts of television schedulers.

Secondly, he must sort out the deepening muddle in the BBC's approach to its commercial activities. Can anyone really explain why the BBC has both a commercial and non-profit online operation, for example? Or how the two relate to each other?

It is time to draw the revenue-generating parts of the BBC more closely to the core, both managerially and creatively. But this will require tighter regulation and that means changes for the system of BBC governance, which has in any case been seriously weakened by the handling of the director general's appointment.

Strategy and politics

Third, Dyke needs to re-think the processes of internal accountability installed by Sir John. Not because these are wrong in principle - they will become ever more essential as commercial competitors intensify their challenge the BBC's privileges.

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But they are excessively complicated and the BBC is paying too heavy a price in stunted creativity as a result.

The thing most often said about Mr Dyke is that he will be better than Sir John at getting people to like him. That is true and many BBC staff will welcome his confident, down-to-earth style.

Mr Dyke is a good TV man and an individual of considerable integrity. But what will really count is the way he makes the big strategic judgements and how he handles the politics of the Blair government when that turns fractious, as it will. On both these scores, he has a very tough act to follow.