Polished, pious and pragmatic, he has turned around Channel 4. Will he really reject a mission to save the BBC? Mark Thompson profiled
In the otherwise disputatious world of broadcasting, there is no real argument about who is best fitted to be the next director general of the BBC. Channel 4's tall and handsome chief executive, Mark Thompson, is considered to tower above everyone else.
Certainly, Thompson's credentials might have been tailored for the job. Hideously white, male and middle-class, he was born in London, brought up in Hertfordshire and educated at Stonyhurst and Merton College, Oxford, where he picked up a First and edited Isis (as you do). He then spent 20 years cutting a glittering swathe through the BBC.
What seemed to be carefully calculated career moves made him not just editor of Panorama, editor of the Nine O'Clock News, controller of BBC2 and then director of television, but also custodian of less glamorous but politically useful briefs such as heading up production in the regions. His move to Channel 4 two years ago was assumed to be just one more step on the road to the DG's panelled suite in Broadcasting House. Nowadays, DG wannabes are expected to show a bit of commercial nous, and Thompson has indeed pulled Channel 4 from financial chaos into healthy profit.
When the new BBC chairman, Michael Grade, tore up the existing list of applicants and promised to do "whatever is necessary" to attract the right candidate, few doubted whom he had in mind. At 46, Thompson looked poised to ascend at last to the position for which God seemed to have placed him on earth. Until 20 April. Pressed by reporters, Thompson announced not only that he intended to stay at Channel 4, but that he would turn down any approach from the BBC. The media world was stunned.
Thompson explained that he wanted to grapple with the challenges confronting his present channel. There is certainly no shortage of those. Channel 4's halcyon days, when advertising was plentiful and digital competitors unlaunched, are long behind it. Now, as Thompson himself has acknowledged, its survival will depend on support from the public purse, if not a humiliating merger with its upstart rival Five. Yet even if Channel 4's future were bright, surely no public broadcasting patriarch of Thompson's standing would willingly pass up the papacy for the archbishopric of Sao Paulo.
In the face of these realities, Thompson-watchers have re-examined his remarks and detected what they believe to be wiggle room. To have "no intention" of applying at one point need not preclude the subsequent emergence of just such an intention, in which situation approaches would be unnecessary. While the world waits, Thompson can beef up the golden-handcuffs offer that his present employers are desperately holding out. Then, if prospects at the BBC look unfavourable, he can luxuriate in financial consolation. If, on the other hand, the path starts to look clear, Channel 4's handcuffs can be regretfully declined and an application can wing its way to the BBC. Or such are the hopes of Thompson's eager supporters. But does it really matter to the rest of us whether the Beeb gets him or not?
He certainly ticks lots of boxes. You want an editor-in-chief who would keep future Huttons at bay? Lord Birt, who was among the harshest critics of the BBC over the Kelly affair, found Thompson a "brilliant" editor at Panorama and was "thrilled" by his Nine O'Clock News. Greg Dyke was just as impressed by his skills as a channel controller. In this role, he proved as effective as Dyke himself at inspiring creative endeavour - only, unlike Dyke, he often turned out to know more than his programme-makers about subjects ranging from history to science.
When it comes to devising strategy, Thompson ("ferociously bright", according to Birt) has few peers. He dreamed up the ambitious master-plan for the digital TV world which the corporation is still pursuing. Perhaps even more importantly, he can expound his ideas persuasively to any kind of audience.
Yet Thompson is not one of TV's dreary workaholics. He is affable, charming, funny and approachable. Although he earned £581,000 last year, his lifestyle is not that glitzy. He spends as much time as he can at his extensive home in Oxford with his beautiful American wife, Jane, an expert on Mary Shelley. Here he plays with their three children and cooks his own home-made pasta. Holidays are spent at the in-laws' place beside a rather large lake in Maine. He is learning to fly a plane.
So far, so almost sickeningly wonderful. But there is one crucial characteristic that sets Thompson entirely apart from almost all of his TV colleagues. Bizarre though this may seem in one plying his rather impious trade, he is a profoundly religious man.
On the Good Friday of the Northern Ireland agreement, BBC news chiefs trying to get the schedule changed were baffled to learn that they could not talk to the controller of BBC2 because he was "in church in Oxford". Indeed, Thompson is to be found each Sunday morning in the church of St Aloysius Gonzaga on the Woodstock Road. With him will be his children, as it falls to him to raise them as Catholics, because his wife is Jewish.
Though Thompson inherited his religion from an Irish mother, he is not your usual kind of contemporary Catholic. St Aloysius Gonzaga is one of the three English oratories established by Cardinal John Henry Newman in the 19th century. Here, Mass is still said in Latin and there is no compromise with the happy-clappy modernism that has left many Catholic services elsewhere as banal as their C of E counterparts. Worship is wholly orthodox and utterly serious.
Some consider it puzzling, if not scandalous, that a man who spends his Sunday mornings in such a place should preside over a channel that has just screened an abortion and stands accused of traducing Christian values by pumping out near-pornography. However, explaining such apparent contradictions comes easily to a man educated by Jesuits. Channel 4 is a vital national institution, and if it must stoop to survive, so be it.
Many of us may have lost faith in the very idea of institutions, but not Thompson. After all, he entrusts the stewardship of his immortal soul to an institution. For him, the institution in which he spent most of his working life is also sacred, as he made clear in a memorable speech in Cambridge in 1997. That institution is now in peril as never before.
Technological, economic and political forces are eating away at the foundations of the BBC, as Ofcom's recent report on public service broadcasting made ominously clear. Some are now convinced that disassembling the corporation offers the only prospect of salvaging the values that it is supposed to enshrine. But those who, like Thompson, believe these values to be inseparable from the institution itself have somehow to try to turn the tide of history.
The only resource available to them is the nation's still tangible attachment to the BBC's institutional mystique. To succeed in their endeavour, they must create and articulate a theology compelling enough to underpin and legitimise that attachment for decades to come. The candidates for the director generalship so far declared are either unable or unwilling to perform this task. If anybody can do it, Thompson can. It is not just that his devotion to the cause springs from deep conviction rather than, as in the case of so many of his former colleagues, mere self-interest. His separate commitment to an even higher cause imbues him alone with the overpowering resolution and ineffable confidence that this great challenge will demand.
Is a man like this really prepared to shut his ears to such a call? And is mere money to play a part in his decision? It seems hardly credible. Yet if this is indeed the reality, we may all feel the consequences.
Since Thompson's "no intention" pronouncement, the bookies have pushed him from the favourite's slot, though even now he is second favourite. (My own candidacy sees me at 25-1.) Pride of place goes instead to Mark Byford, the acting DG. Byford is honest, decent and courageous but uninspiring and unimaginative. At every level of the corporation, people are convinced he would lead them to disaster, a belief that could easily prove self-fulfilling. His "star chamber" prosecutions of news staff implicated in the Kelly affair could yet provoke a corporation-wide strike.
The DG selection process gets under way on 17 May. Many will be hoping that, between now and then, Mark Thompson receives urgent guidance from above.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
