Caroline Frost: 'It helps to be less emotional about being BBC director-general'

I could never be the director-general of the BBC. My love for broadcasting means I’d totter with the burden as though carrying a priceless Ming vase. The good news is, I’ll probably never be asked. In the BBC’s near 104-year history, only 18 people – all men – have.

The latest, Matt Brittin, assumed the role in May. Late last month, I attended an interview he gave to the Royal Television Society. An earlier session had overrun, leaving his slot an abrupt 18 minutes – no opportunity, then, for me to ask how, amid a month of BBC workforce decimation, he could justify paying three presenters for a show that had previously employed two. The following day, the biggest headlines he had inspired concerned his revelation that he’d received an AI-generated offering for a future episode of Doctor Who. “It was pretty good,” he said.

In the current climate – including, but not limited to, badly behaved presenters, daily rows over impartiality about the Middle East, the small matter of being sued by the most powerful man on the planet, plus existential debate over the licence fee and the looming Sword of Damocles of charter renewal in the next 18 months – Brittin could reasonably call that a win.

How easy is it being director-general of the BBC? A look at the fates of its most recent incumbents hints at the instability of the job: sacked, contract not renewed, resigned before being sacked, survived, resigned, survived, resigned. You’d have better odds of emerging intact if you were married to a bearded bloke called Henry. The good news is that, for almost as long as there’s been a BBC, it has invariably been, at least in the eyes of its critics, “the worst time in the history of the BBC”.

Perhaps it helps to be less emotional about the whole business

Government run-ins have been de rigueur since Harold Wilson refused to speak to the corporation following his 1966 election win and later threatened to sue. Alasdair Milne was forced to resign in 1987 following repeated clashes with Margaret Thatcher.

Then there was Greg Dyke (2000–4), a whirligig of creative enthusiasm who once charmed my department manager by casually giving him his VIP tickets for a Manchester United match. I still have one of the famous yellow cards he issued to staff: “Cut the Crap. Make It Happen.” Unfortunately, what did happen on his watch was the row over allegations that the government had “sexed up” its Iraq dossier, and he became another DG to fall on his sword. Perhaps it helps to be less emotional about the whole business. A cool-headed John Birt (1992–2000) brought in sweeping changes that turned the corporation into a swirling commercial ecosystem, and was equally unblinking when his own accounts were investigated. He emerged unscathed and was knighted soon after.

I once asked Tim Davie (2020–26) how he could bear the burden of leading BBC Worldwide (now Studios), and he replied, “You have to see it as just another profit and loss.” Such bean-counting focus no doubt reduces sleepless nights, even if Davie’s departure didn’t draw the crowds who clapped Greg Dyke out of the building.

Meanwhile, matt brittin has said nothing disrespectful about any one BBC element (“There isn’t a show or service that doesn’t have fans”), and he has denied, despite his Google past, that he’s a tech bro: “What’s that?” he asked Laura Kuenssberg.

Nor is he, by his own admission, a journalist or programme-maker. Nevertheless, in 2026, he finds himself holding the cleaver at yet another “worst time in the history of the BBC”. We can only hope that he has enough of both Dyke’s fervour and Davie’s focus to carry this priceless vase safely across the precipice.