Who would ever want to run the BBC?

It has been a tumultuous few days for the BBC. First, we learned that Lord Tony Hall is to step down as its Director-General. The search for his rival, someone who will take up a luxurious but undoubtedly poisoned chalice, will begin imminently.

There is no doubt that Lord Hall’s seven-year tenure has been significant, not least because he led the broadcaster at a period of great digital disruption in the media industry.

While David Herman rightly pointed out on TheArticle, that Lord Hall’s time at the top has not been without error, I’m not sure I’d go as far to say that he has been “the worst ever Director-General of the BBC”. I think there are some significant things in the “plus” column.

For instance, under his leadership, the iPlayer has continued to develop and has become a platform that can compete, in technological terms at least, with the likes of Netflix. You need only to look at the awful ITVHub for what can happen when this goes wrong. Britbox, a collaboration in streaming with ITV, has launched in the UK, having already rolled out in the US. I don’t even mind BBC Sounds . . . that much.

But, as I say, not everything has been perfect. Far from it. We learned this week that, with the apparent threat of financial strain looming, Victoria Derbyshire’s eponymous daily television programme is to come off air. According to a tweet from the presenter, she only learned her show was to get the axe via the Times. A poor decision, poorly communicated. The Victoria Derbyshire Show has covered a number of often-overlooked issues, including sexual abuse. If the BBC can’t have room in its schedule for this kind of public service journalism, it is not entirely clear what the point of the organisation is.

Furthermore, while there have been a few big hits in drama, notably The Bodyguard and Line of Duty, the programming schedule can sometimes leave a lot to be desired. The Christmas TV offering this year, apart from the return of Gavin and Stacey, was embarrassingly bad — how many more episodes of Mrs Brown’s Boys or shows by Michael McIntyre do we need? (The correct answer is zero, by the way.) I appreciate that responsibility for these programming decisions does not come down to Lord Hall directly, but the buck stops with the Director-General.

The next few years will see political pressure put on the BBC. The current funding model via the license fee will certainly face scrutiny, and might even be significantly changed, for instance by decriminalising non-payment. It may event be scrapped altogether.

Indeed, there is a theory that the cancelling of the Victoria Derbyshire Show, citing the need to make cuts, is part of an all-out PR offensive from the BBC — cancel something that people like, watch the public outcry like there was when Radio 6 Music came under threat, and make the government realise that it cannot make it harder for the BBC to fund such things. It’s a risky, but potentially successful, approach.

However, a Tory party with a big majority and which feels the national broadcaster is biased against it, will still surely look to seek revenge. Current BBC radio supremo James Purnell is thought to be one of the frontrunners to succeed Lord Hall, and the appointment of a former Labour cabinet minister would be unlikely to dampen Tory suspicions.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s top aide, Dominic Cummings, directed a think tank that in 2004 referred to the BBC as “a mortal enemy” to the Conservative Party. It also advocated the “end of the BBC in its current form” and called on right-wingers to undermine the broadcaster. Assuming Cummings hasn’t moved too greatly from that position, such a view now sits at the heart of a government that can do whatever it wants.

Whatever the political posturing, the truth is that the public broadly like, and trust, the BBC. According to a recent YouGov poll, BBC One is the second most popular TV channel and the most famous, with 76 per cent of Brits having a positive opinion of it, with just nine per cent having a negative one.

However, the same pollster found that trust in the public broadcaster did drop around last month’s election. In December 2019, eight per cent of Brits said they trust the BBC “a great deal” and a further 36 per cent said they trust it “a fair amount”. That’s compared with 28 per cent who trust it “not much” and 20 per cent who trust it “not at all”. Perhaps the apparent Cummings plan to undermine the BBC is working. Perhaps it has created its own issues. Whichever it is, the next Director-General needs to reverse that trend. And fast.

So the battle lines for the BBC’s future have been drawn. Funding strain, a programming shake up, and a government straining at the leash to reform it. Who on Earth would want to be the next Director-General?