The new BBC director-general faces an unprecedented challenge

Editorial: It is a dangerous moment, given how much tension there has been between the government and public service broadcasters

Tim Davie has shown he has editorial decisiveness (Getty)

For its 17th director-general, the British Broadcasting Corporation has chosen Tim Davie. As many were quick to point out, he is, like his predecessors, a white male from a fairly conventional background. It is difficult to believe that, whatever Mr Davie’s virtues, there was no woman and no person of colour who could have taken on the role. Especially in the current climate, it is, in that respect, a disappointing appointment.

Every DG is greeted with warnings about his taking over at an unprecedentedly difficult time with insuperable challenges and a hostile government. Sometimes it has been true, but right now Mr Davie faces genuinely existential problems for the future health of what remains one of the UK’s truly global brands. Mr Davie will have to prepare for the negotiations with ministers on a new BBC charter, due to begin in 2027. His background in Conservative politics may do him no harm in those talks.

It is a dangerous moment, given how much tension there has been between the government and public service broadcasters. But the BBC is a precious asset for post-Brexit so-called Global Britain. To borrow a fashionable phrase, it is a “world-beating” institution in its journalism, its creativity and, indeed, in the value for money the licence fee represents.

Mr Davie has a background in the commercial side of the business, but he has showed some editorial decisiveness as well. In a brief previous spell as acting DG, Mr Davie moved rapidly to close down the various controversies from the Jimmy Savile scandal, which had ended the BBC career of his unlucky predecessor, George Entwistle.

The rise of the tech giants, web-based entertainment and streaming services such as Netflix are making life tougher for broadcasters such as the BBC. The corporation’s programme-making budgets are dwarfed by its new rivals, and the BBC and other British-based players have been slow to react with their new BritBox service. This has great potential but the future probably lies with greater collaboration both with other “legacy” traditional broadcasters and with the likes of Disney and Amazon. In this respect, the future of the industry and the BBC mirrors the way that British Airways has had to adapt to the revolutions in the environment in which it operates.

The point about the BBC’s commercial strategy, and the overriding objective, is for it to continue to provide its excellent services for as long as possible, and in as commercially fair a manner as possible. In particular it needs to attract the younger viewers, listeners and web users increasingly seduced by other digital output and other screen-based distractions, such as games and ever-evolving social media.

A previous generation of social commentators mourned the arrival of mass television audiences and the grip that the magic rectangle exerted on people’s lives and attitudes. The days of millions of families across the land huddling around the set in the living room to watch a soap special or the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show may be over, but at least they provided a communal cultural experience. How the BBC will survive to serve an increasingly fragmented and digitally liberated country is not yet clear.

Yet Mr Davie’s immediate tasks will be political, and bruising. The government shows little sign of relinquishing its hostility to just about everything the BBC does. It will continue to insist that the licence fee levied on the over-75s is a matter for the BBC, whereas it was and should be an arm of social security. That is an increasingly insupportable financial drag.

More seriously still, many Conservatives and Boris Johnson’s maverick adviser Dominic Cummings seem to think the country would be better off without BBC News. As ever, many on the left think the same, with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, for example, caught in the crossfire of Britain’s bitter never-ending culture wars and accused of bias by all sides. The fashion for conspiracies and contempt for “the mainstream media” have infected public debate and undermined democracy even more than the governmental bullying of the present and the past.

The good news for Mr Davie is that many of his predecessors have steered the BBC through many of the challenges he faces. The bad news is that none of them have had to face all of the problems that are in store for him.