Rhodri Talfan Davies to be appointed BBC interim director general, replacing Tim Davie

LONDON: Tim Davie is finally switching off the lights. The BBC’s beleaguered director-general will depart on 2 April, nearly five months after announcing his resignation in the wake of a Panorama editing scandal that has left the corporation facing a multi-billion-dollar defamation lawsuit from Donald Trump himself.

The American president is decidedly unamused about the way the flagship current affairs programme spliced together two sections of his 6 January 2021 speech. Who can blame him? Though the BBC might argue it was simply tightening up his rambling rhetoric, Trump’s lawyers see it rather differently and are preparing to make the corporation pay handsomely for the privilege.

Davie, who became the BBC’s seventeenth director-general in 2020, has spent much of his tenure firefighting. From impartiality rows to editorial mishaps, the man has had more crises than a Greek finance minister. His departure, announced in an internal memo last November, came as the Trump furore reached fever pitch.

Stepping into the breach will be Rhodri Talfan Davies, currently director of nations and the corporation’s AI tsar. He’ll take the reins on 3 April  as interim director-general whilst the hunt for a permanent replacement grinds on. Talfan Davies will join the board as an executive director from 1 Februaryto smooth the transition though whether anything about this mess can truly be described as “smooth” remains debatable.

The incoming director-general, whoever draws the short straw, will inherit a poisoned chalice of Shakespearean proportions. Beyond the Trump lawsuit, they’ll have to negotiate the BBC’s next royal charter (the current one expires in 2027) and wrangle with the government over the future of the licence fee. Meanwhile, Rhuanedd Richards will continue as interim nations director, presumably keeping the seat warm until the musical chairs finally stop.

BBC chairman Samir Shah praised Davie’s “extraordinary contribution” and Talfan Davies’s “passionate commitment to public service broadcasting.” Translation: one chap is leaving under a cloud, and another is bravely stepping into the firing line.

For Davie, April can’t come soon enough. For his successor, it may well come too soon. The Beeb on its part, as ever, soldiers on.