Oxbridge graduates will no longer enjoy a fast-track to the top of the BBC as the corporation’s boss pledged to recruit staff from a broader range of backgrounds.
Tim Davie, BBC Director-General, said the broadcaster needed “modernising” to reflect the whole of the UK and connect with all viewers.
He told a virtual Ofcom conference that reflecting “socio-economic diversity, different types of people, different voices” was a “big issue” for the BBC.
‘We won’t recruit in same way’
He added: “What is Britain?… It can’t be that we’re just taking people from a certain academic track. l have lit a fire on this. We won’t recruit in the same way.”
“We need to look more broadly across the UK so that everyone says ‘the BBC is for me’ and ‘my views are represented’.”
He said trust in the BBC grew over the last year. “But I get a sense in our research that there are certain people who do not connect with us, who ask ‘Is the BBC for me?’”
Davie, the first in his family to attend University, studied English at Cambridge. His predecessor Tony Hall read Politics at Oxford.
Dyke first non-Oxbridge, public school DG
Greg Dyke was the first Director-General who had been to neither public school nor Oxbridge when he became the 13th person to hold the post, in 2000.
Between 2006 and 2010, 5.7 per cent of all successful applicants for jobs and work experience at the BBC were Oxbridge graduates – but the Oxbridge intake has historically dominated executive and managerial roles.
Davie said that the TV licence fee model was the best way of funding the BBC. The current licence fee model is guaranteed until December 31 2027, the end of the current charter.
“I haven’t seen a model that beats the current one at the moment, a universally funded licence fee,” he said.
Asked about an increase in evasion, he said it “is marginally up… We’ve got 25 million paying households”.
Channel 4 sell-off question
The panel discussion also heard Channel 4 chief executive Alex Mahon saying she was not concerned by comments from Media minister John Whittingdale, who said privatising Channel 4 remained an option.
She told the Small Screen: Big Debate virtual conference that the issue will “always be there as a question but it is not one that unduly worries me”.