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Academy Profile
CITIZENDYKE
WILL THE NEW DIRECTOR GENERAL BE LUCKY THIRTEEN FOR THE BBC? STEVE CLARKE MAKES AN ASSESSMENT
The Greg Dyke myth is easy to fathom, but the truth concern- ing the man who only recently took centre stage as the BBC’s 13th Director General is much more difficult to grasp.
The myth goes something like this. Thirty year-old failure (his ‘O’ level count rivals John Major’s) lands job in television following an unsatisfactory career in local newspapers and left-wing politics. Once installed at London
Weekend Television, Dyke
reinvents popular factual
TV with The Six O’Clock
Show, a London-only Friday
night lark fronted by the
unlikely trio of Michael
Aspel, Janet Street-Porter
and Danny Baker.
His very next move
involves single-handedly
saving struggling break-
fast station TV-am from
bankruptcy. This is, of
course, all thanks to
Roland Rat, the furry
glove puppet endlessly
depicted as Dyke’s alter
ego. Dyke’s success in the frontier-territory of early
morning TV lands him a job running the programme department of ambitious but put upon TVS, the South Coast sta- tion desperate to join ITV’s Premier League of Thames, Granada, LWT, Yorkshire, and Central.
After proving his mettle as a manag- er and raising TVS’s network profile, LWT lures him back. Dyke succeeds John Birt as director of programmes, ris- ing to become managing director and chief executive. The rest, spearheading LWT’s successful franchise bid and col- lecting a fortune in the notorious “gold- en handcuffs” deal, is history.
This version of The Greg Dyke Story fails to acknowledge both his
skill as a TV journalist (at LWT
he was a successful producer on
The London Programme and Weekend World), his extraordi- nary luck, or his enduring rela- tionship with Sir Christopher
Alan Parker on the set of Angela’s Ashes and above, Greg Dyke the new Director General of the BBC
Bland, the hard-boiled Tory-supporting BBC chairman who first encountered Dyke at LWT in the Eighties, where he also occupied the chairman’s office.
A colleague says: “Whatever his abil- ities, and they are many, it is impossible to imagine Greg becoming director gen- eral were Bland not running the BBC. After all, it was Greg who once said: ‘Saddam Hussein has more chance of becoming DG than I do.’”
and all those self-deprecating jokes. Greg is a more substantial figure than either John Birt or Michael Grade although he shares similarities with each of them.”
Given the challenges and uncertain- ties that confront the BBC, Dyke will need to be a bigger and more consis- tently successful player than both men. His review, due to report this month (February), looks likely to tone down
the Corporation’s internal market and lead to a new commissioning structure across the BBC.
In other words, the division of the organisa- tion’s activities into BBC Broadcast and Production, spanning TV and radio, is likely to end. Layers of middle management are also expected to disap- pear under the Dyke regime, with many jobs cut from the corporate centre.
Editorially, Dyke’s biggest headache is the loss of sports rights during the Birt years and BBC1’s weakness in the two areas
that ought to be its biggest strengths - popular drama and popular entertain- ment. In both cases, Dyke, who is not famous for his patience, will want to see results quickly or heads will roll. The BBC’s digital channels also need atten- tion, most notably News 24, attacked remorselessly in Gerald Kaufman’s recent Select Committee report.
Staff morale, a chronic problem under Birt, is already improving. Says a senior producer: “I am very excited by people talking about the need to have joy in work again. With all the concern about accountancy and the bottom line, that’s not something we’ve heard around here in a long time.”
Only time will tell how long the Dyke honeymoon will last and if the good luck that has come to his rescue in the past will hold firm as he tackles the BBC. If he succeeds, the Greg Dyke myth looks set to run and run. ■
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The myth also makes light of the set- backs, ironies and downright failures that form vital episodes in Dyke’s career. He still struggles to come to terms with the humiliation of Granada’s hostile takeover of LWT so soon after retaining the franchise.
Most of all, this rags-to-riches analy- sis of Dyke’s working life fails to get to grips with the character of someone who has much more experience of the television industry than any previous BBC Director General.
“There is a widely-held view that Greg is an instinctive populist who has just got lucky, all the Roland Rat’s Dad
stuff,” says an industry veteran. “But Greg is a great actor who is capable of playing many differ- ent kinds of roles. He is not an intellectual but he has a very keen analytical mind. Don’t be fooled by the Jack-The-Lad style
Steve Clarke is co-authoring a biography of Greg Dyke, Citizen Dyke, to be published by Simon and Schuster later this year.