Survival

It was a scandal that propelled his leadership of the BBC. And now another one has taken it away.

Tim Davie, the 17th Director General of the BBC, announced his resignation November 9 alongside Deborah Turness, the CEO of BBC News. The moves come as part of the growing fallout over a BBC program that edited a January 6, 2021 speech from Donald Trump to make it seem like he was explicitly calling for violence that day, and combined separate quotes that, in fact, were said over 50 minutes apart. The resignations follow Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension and reinstatement at ABC, editorial changes made at CBS News, and other apparent concessions made to Trump across the media landscape. The president immediately followed up the news of Davie and Turness’ departures by threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion.

Whether or not that lawsuit actually proceeds, Davie and Turness’ resignations show one thing is clear: The BBC is operating in survival mode right now and taking steps, even drastic ones, to ensure the organization can continue into the future. The BBC has faced existential moments before — but maybe none quite like this one, especially as discussions ramp up in 2026 before the current charter expires at the end of 2027 (more on that charter process follows below). Davie himself embodies the foundational question that guides so much decision-making there: What should the BBC be?

There is a remarkable symmetry to his BBC tenure. A Pepsi marketing executive who joined the Beeb as the Director of Marketing, Communications, and Audiences in 2005, Davie was initially propelled into the Director General role in 2012 because of a scandal in which the program “Newsnight” erroneously identified a Conservative MP in a child abuse case. He then made his name by his rigorous investigation of the Jimmy Savile sex abuse case. His Director General role then was just a temporary stint before Davie became the CEO of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, which sells BBC programs and merchandise around the world (think: “Dancing with the Stars”). And now another scandal about misleading reporting has ended his BBC career altogether, after he became Director General permanently in 2020.

I encountered Davie a few times while I was the New York-based Deputy Editor of BBC Culture from 2013 to 2018. For the first part of that period, BBC Culture was housed under BBC Worldwide (later renamed BBC Studios), before we were transferred to BBC News following the 2016 election. Davie would visit our New York office once or twice a year and give a polished Town Hall in front of every employee.

While the BBC and its audience could skew nerdy — full of news junkies and fans of its period dramas as well as “Doctor Who” — Davie represented corporate panache. His whole job was to pursue scale, scale, scale, and relentlessly expand the BBC far beyond its former reach. Wearing a blazer but no necktie, and evoking someone with a salary capable of routine vacations in the Maldives, he’d give his Jobsian presentations seeming more like a commercial executive than someone who’d once again ever sit atop the world’s largest publicly funded news organization. And he had a peculiar verbal tic, ending many of his bullet-point comments with “Yeah?” clearly posed as a question. Intentional or not, it had the effect of cultivating a “smartest man in the room” vibe. What else could we as his listeners respond to “Yeah?” with but “Yeah, I get it!” lest we seem degrees less intelligent ourselves.

On one occasion the features sites of which I was part (Autos, Worklife, Future, and Travel, being the others) were to give presentations to him about what we do. Each editor, myself included, had to give a short synopsis of our editorial successes and what we had coming up. It was like preparing for the arrival of the king, down to a full rehearsal of exactly everything we were going to say. He also could have the icy rhetoric of a bean counter — I never forgot a BBC-wide email he sent announcing the termination of a partnership with travel brand Lonely Planet with the phrase “the partnership with Lonely Planet has not added value to the BBC” — so we had to get it right.

His visit went fine, of course. But he was a CEO, not a journalist. Not one of us. Installing him as Director General in 2020 symbolizes many of the ongoing challenges of the BBC as a brand: How far can it grow until it’s no longer the BBC? Davie relentlessly wanted to diversify the BBC’s revenue streams by expanding commercially. It’s a kind of endless pas de deux that will continue after him as well: How to wean off U.K. government funding without ever doing too much to truly jeopardize the existence of that government funding.

For the uninitiated, that public funding is the BBC’s lifeblood: Every year, anyone who wants to watch live TV or utilize the BBC’s streaming iPlayer service has to pay the BBC Licence Fee, which is currently a flat £174.50 ($230) a year. That that has to be paid upfront before watching any live TV at all is a source of routine controversy. What if you were forced to pay for a certain cable plan in the U.S., no matter what? There’s basically no cord-cutting allowed with the Licence Fee. And it means that, as the BBC is the national broadcaster receiving these public funds from the ordinary British taxpayer, it’s held to levels of scrutiny, and standards of impartiality, we can’t even imagine for our own broadcasters in the U.S.

Part of the reason why Davie was an attractive Director General was the fact he flew against the Beeb’s perceived left-wing bias, having run for public office with the Conservative Party in the past. In 2020, he issued a strict social media policy for all BBC journalists that specifically cautioned against “virtue signaling.” The New Statesman named him the 11th most powerful person on the right in U.K. politics.

That he would still run afoul of Trump despite all that shows how difficult it is to run a news organization at this moment. But also how difficult it is to relentlessly grow, expand, and commercialize something that isn’t entirely meant to be commercial. Previous Directors General, such as Davie’s immediate predecessor Tony Hall, who was also the final governor of Hong Kong, had backgrounds more in keeping with preserving national treasures, not powering explosive growth.

For what it’s worth, Turness, with her background as an actual journalist and former president of NBC News (immediately preceding “A House of Dynamite” scribe Noah Oppenheim in the post), was a perfect choice as BBC News CEO herself. She represented a distinctly British tradition of newsgathering as a public service; Davie the monetization of it.

That both would be forced to resign makes one wonder where the BBC can go next but retreat into its absolute core competencies. Especially since the once-a-decade charter renewal, which allocates the Licence Fee, is coming up soon. Every 10 years, after a long debate about the scope and parameters of public funding for the BBC and the issuing of white papers, a charter for its continual operation is submitted to the Sovereign, now King Charles III, for the royal seal of approval. This can be a fraught process: Become too commercial, as some might argue the BBC did become under Davie, then the question can be asked, “Why allocate public funds at all?”

Or: Wade too deeply into controversial subjects, and the BBC can be hit with partisan backlash. Trump ally Nigel Farage touted the resignation of Davie and Turness as an admission the BBC is “institutionally biased” in what The Independent said was him “dancing on its grave.” There have been threats to end the charter before — Boris Johnson’s own culture secretary Nadine Dorries said she intended for the current charter to be its last — but maybe they’ve never landed with such force until right now.

Davie and Turness both leaving feels like an anticipatory move of the charter fight to come. Cleaning house and starting over might well put the BBC on a better footing to face the question that must be answered after “What should the BBC be?”: What should the BBC become?