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Media: A Moment with Marquis.(management styles of Lord Birt and Michael Grade)
Lord Birt is a clever and successful man. He has been clever and successful in several ways, not least in turning himself into one of the prime minister's most trusted advisers. But you have to wonder whether giving him a role - any role - in determining the future of the BBC was right.
In his time as director-general, John Birt brought about some of the most radical changes the corporation had ever seen. In many respects his move to more of a 'market economy' at the BBC was welcome and overdue.
But in implementing his vision, he failed to carry the hearts and minds of BBC employees and, in the end, his reign was seen as harsh, bureaucratic and anti-creative, in stark contrast to that of his 'man of the people' successor, Greg Dyke.
With this record, does Lord Birt not carry too much BBC baggage to be able to provide a dispassionate assessment of the future of broadcasting and the BBC's place within it? You could argue that his extensive experience of broadcasting makes him ideally suited to the 'blue sky thinking' role in which he has been cast, but against that you must weigh a very personal but all too public antipathy to the current BBC chairman, Michael Grade.
It is hard, looking at the two of them now, to imagine them as friends back at ...
- Lord Birt attacks Whitehall over lack of skills.
- Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England) April 20, 2006 700+ words
...BLAIR'S former "blue-skies thinker" Lord Birt today declared that many Government departments...post - as much as Cabinet ministers. Lord Birt, former director general of the BBC...comment on advice given in Downing Street. Lord Birt refused to "name and shame" individual...
- Lord Birt's Ironclad Self-Esteem and The BBC. (Reviews).(The Harder Path: The...
- Magazine article from: Contemporary Review Wedd, George March 1, 2003 700+ words
...length portraits, which most of them are. The exception is Lord Birt's, which is entirely occupied by his face. I was told that...left in any doubt where he stands on an issue; a fence, for Lord Birt, is anything but a place to sit. His working life has been...
- Free heroin would cut crime says Lord Birt.
- Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England) February 9, 2006 700+ words
Byline: PAUL WAUGH TONY BLAIR's former aide Lord Birt called for the prescription of free heroin to combat Britain...crimes if they had free access to heroin prescriptions. Lord Birt left No 10 last year to join a City firm and was a controversial...
- No10 adviser Lord Birt 'wants to run top uranium company'.
- Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England) September 26, 2005 700+ words
...firms. Urenco owns one of Britain's nuclear enrichment research plants in Cheshire and hopes to open another in America. Lord Birt, pictured, has not commented on the position and Downing Street said it was "unaware of the application."
- A new battle of the set-top boxes coming.(beliefs of Lord Birt)(Brief Article)
- Newspaper article from: The Online Reporter September 10, 2005 700+ words
...decade for a new battle of the boxes, with BT and Sky TV likely to be the two Goliaths fighting it out to the death," said Lord Birt, Tony Blair's strategy advisor and the former BBC director general at the Edinburgh International Television Festival...
- Grade must save the BBC.(Column)
- Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England) April 2, 2004 700+ words
...LEBRECHT THE last time Michael Grade was up for the BBC chairmanship...sinister recruitment of Lord Birt's hiking chum, the...name fitted both bills. Michael Grade, during the mid-1980s...them on air. John - now Lord - Birt arrived at the BBC as...
- Will Birt take revenge on his former BBC rivals? Friday's MacTaggart Lecture...
- Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England) August 24, 2005 700+ words
...his memoirs he recalls Michael Grade's 1992 MacTaggart Memorial...a decade later, as Lord Birt, strategy adviser to...of vengeance" against Michael Grade, now the BBC chairman...caution need apply when Lord Birt turns to the man who...
- Dimbleby and Grade lead race for top BBC job.
- Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England) March 11, 2004 700+ words
...gathers he has been joined by Michael Grade and former Financial Times Editor...University College, Oxford, with Lord Birt and Lord Butler on the very day...s not saying anything," says Michael Grade's office. Dimbleby is not linked...