Greg Dyke: Inside Story [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

When Greg Dyke took over from John Birt as Director-General (DG) of the BBC in 2000, I was working for BBC Magazines in`BBC Worldwide Ltd', the commercial arm of the BBC. We were at arm's length from the BBC itself, and tiny in comparison to the organisation as a whole, but we were part of the same family. We could sense the excitement of producers and programme makers, of broadcasters and administrators caused by Dyke's arrival We got the same `all desks' emails from Dyke himself: direct, sensible, motivational. We saw the same internal brodcasts of interviews and events. Dyke was impressive and inspirational.

Dyke's predecessor, John Birt, had, rightly or wrongly, not been widely liked at the BBC (to put it mildly). He wanted a successor from within the BBC who understood his thinking and would carry on his good work. He had written a twenty-year plan for the BBC and insisted on a ludicrously long five-month handover for the new DG. He was not happy when Dyke, the outsider from commercial television, got the job. Dyke wasn't very interested in Birt's 20-year plan: "In my experience, the only thing you can be certain about when dealing with long-term plans is that they will turn out to be wrong: there are too many variables for them ever to be right." This common-sense approach is very Dyke. Dyke is also right that the last thing that an organisation needs is another leader just like the old one: change in leadership style is essential, and healthy.

If Birt's vision was to create 'the best managed public sector organisation in the world', Dyke's vision was to build 'The most creative organisation in the world.' Dyke reduced administration costs across the BBC and channelled these savings into programme-making. His most significant initiative was probably `Making it Happen': an inspirational programme that highlighted the contributions to the creation of excellent programming made behind the scenes by people at every level of the organisation. BBC personnel were energised and inspired. The mood changed.

Dyke's career as DG came to an abrupt and premature end when his resignation was accepted by the BBC's Board of Governors after New Labour's vicious attack on the BBC, led by Tony Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell, for having allowed one its journalists, in the build-up to the war with Iraq, to suggest that the dossier claiming that Iraq was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction within forty-five minutes had been `sexed up'. The row stirred up by the government over this issue led to the suicide of UN weapons inspector David Kelly, one of the BBC's sources.

Dyke is conscientious and even-handed in his reporting of the events surrounding this national crisis. When he left, staff demonstrated in the street. Some cried. As Herb Schlosser, ex-president and CEO of NBC wrote to Dyke: "I saw on the internet BBC employees marching in support of a CEO. This is a first in the history of the Western World."

The only fault in this intriguing account of Dyke's career in broadcasting, before and after the BBC, is the amount of time that he devotes diligently to recording the precise events that were investigated by the Hutton enquiry. He could have saved his pains: we would all be happy, now, with a much shorter version that simply records that the BBC fulfilled its journalistic duties honestly and faithfully, and that the government brought unreasonable pressure to bear on the national broadcaster in an attempt to deflect criticism of its actions.

Inside Story is an excellent record of a remarkable period in British broadcasting history and a valuable document for those studying the issues surrounding the Iraq War. But it is also, and above all, a masterclass in modern management and leadership. It comes as no surprise to read that Dyke's mentor at Harvard Business School was the great management and leadership thinker, John P. Kotter. Kotter must be proud of his student.

Two stars because there is at least some content.

This book starts with an account of the publication and impact of the 'Hutton Inquiry'. Dyke's account is simply not credible. The BBC has plenty of lawyers - I think I saw a figure of 77 - and it's impossible they would be unaware, especially in a world where unelected EU types impose bizarre unworkable laws, that reports ordered by governments will be slanted. They must have expected something of the sort. And made plans - but maybe they wanted Dyke out. He says resignation wouldn't matter to him anyway - the BBC still had to pay! There are similar ironies throughout this book, for example a woman called Salmond in 'Human Resources' had a better pension deal than Dyke (he may have meant a percentage, though)... fantastic job titles of these people - apparently selected by a military-minded megalomaniac propagandist ... the almost lunatic way Dyke discounts the few billion advantage the BBC has over almost everyone else.

Dyke has little interest in the BBC - there is no account of who selected the 'Governors', despite their obvious relevance. He has little interest in the world, either. He seems to have a chip on his shoulder about Hayes, Middx. He appears as a boy to have been the type to carefully note who has a car, who has a TV, who has this, who has that. As a student, he seems to have been happy just putting down a couple of conflicting views - I don't think he had any interest in trying to unravel mysteries. Ideal training, in fact, for the BBC! When he was born, the BBC was run by ex-military types - there are some amusing accounts, written by women. People would be informed by letter that they were, or weren't, hired, or fired. The policy was probably decided by the Foreign Office and Home Office, I would guess. As late as Dyke, the FO funded the 'World Service', and no doubt still does. Dyke doesn't comment on this, or the 'listening post' Cavendish Park stuff, and it's hard to believe he had any interest. Decisions on things like (in sequence) mass murders in eastern Europe, the JFK murder, mass murders in Vietnam and Biafra, immigration, industrial policy, who should control printed money, AIDS, 9/11 etc etc must have been simply handed down for the hacks to extrude. The policies are too monolithic to have been anything other than deliberately thought out. It must have been like a prestigious but horribly secretive civil service department. No wonder there is not one single well-written memo, biography, or essay collection by an employee - it would be like expecting amusing pieces about life in the Pravda buildings.

Anyway Dyke cut his teeth on lightweight stuff, though it's hard to know what he actually did. The script and camera work, and the money and the contracts and the sales, all seem to have been someone else's job. Maybe he simply talked to everyone, or did his best. A striking aspect of all this is the smallness of the 'industry'. When Thatcher introduced the idea of bids for companies, there were very very few. Probably the 'industry' was overweighted by overpaid people, and expensive equipment (digitised stuff started to come in over the whole period after about 1980). Dyke gives no figures for overall advertising revenue, needed by his rivals, though he says there was no room for others, and that it started to plummet after about 2000.

It's impossible to know what Dyke did. He states - and it seems highly likely - that one action was simply to collect suggestions, and act on them. There are some pathetic examples - a building's atrium, blocked off for a decade or two, or more, was at last opened up to employee lunch hours. A coffee machine (or something) was installed somewhere. Godawful buildings were made slightly less godawful.

The BBC is a state propaganda machine, and clearly Dyke was an ideal person to run it, as he had no ideas whatever on human progress or societal goals or whether truth should be allowed out occasionally. The book is mostly concerned with - first part - deals, including breakfast TV - there was of course a loan-backed pseudo-boom. And - second part - office politics. When a new 'Director-General' was being thought about, whole squadrons of office people started to back one or other from an amazingly short shortlist. Dyke's book is unanalytical, so it's impossible to know whether his descriptions are reliable, though I'd guess the people he liked, and didn't like, are recorded correctly. There are a few pages on a 'Dyke must stay' campaign - again, hard to deconstruct from the quoted emails and letters - it's hard to believe they could be serious about their 'creativity' for example. My best guess is that he was believed more likely to fork out more money than the others.