hy did anyone really believe anyone other than Tim Davie would be the next director general of the BBC? Facing an existential crisis, buffeted by financial, political and cultural storms, the very British corporation was always likely to pick the privately educated white man who went to Oxbridge. And that was before confirmation that he was involved in his local Conservative Party in the 1990s. The current government, which misses no opportunity to accuse the BBC of leftwing bias, can surely hardly believe its luck than the new occupant was once one of them. Faced with a choice between Davie and the two other strong contenders – a woman with creative rather than editorial experience, the BBC’s director of content, Charlotte Moore, and a charismatic outsider, William Lewis, a media executive who has attracted more headlines in his career than the other two put together – a panel led by the BBC’s chairman, David Clementi (Winchester, Oxford), went for Davie (Whitgift, Cambridge; although he went to Whitgift on a scholarship, and was the first in his family to go to university). The frontrunner more or less from the moment Tony Hall announced his departure, Davie even had a trial run at the job in 2012, in the middle of the scandal over the way the BBC handled sexual abuse allegations. He is the very definition of a safe pair of hands. Despite 15 years at the BBC, including four months in the top job, he is credited with neither the sort of radical, visionary actions that create headlines nor (and perhaps more importantly) the pratfalls that so often get director generals into trouble. That he feels like a slightly uninspiring choice is perhaps because of the exigencies of the age: today’s director general needs to be a financial whizz, journalistic rock and political street fighter. This is then not the column to ask why the BBC has spent 98 years being led by men, but rather what sort of BBC will mark its centenary. The corporation is always facing challenges of one kind or another, but rarely has its method of funding via a mandatory and universal licence fee seemed so at risk, nor its independence from a government seemingly hellbent on destroying it. Davie’s background does not negate the fact that he has a smart commercial mind and is universally popular among his staff. He is generally so well regarded that few have a bad word to say against him. The fact he has become the ultimate BBC insider is a testament to the perseverance of this former marketing manager for PepsiCo, who for years had to endure the snootiness of a British media world that hated anyone focused on money. How times change. Now his financial experience – he will become the only director general to have worked in both an external and internal commercial role as well as editorial (four years running radio) – is likely to please a government looking at a radical rethink of BBC funding. Hall is leaving the job after seven years, not just without an obvious successor but with the BBC facing a financially constrained future. While the licence fee settlement he negotiated until 2022 provides more security than most are facing in the current moment, many of the most difficult decisions have simply been kicked into the long grass, where they lie in wait like snakes for his successor. Among them is what to do about the controversial decision to start charging the over-75s for their licence fee, a decision delayed until August because of lockdown. The BBC’s sterling performance during the outbreak of Covid-19 – from news to education (it even sourced ventilators from a soap opera to help the NHS) – may have helped with public support, but the overspending is estimated to have cost a further £125m this year. The fact of public support is, however, the only way the BBC can truly fight a government that, even while fighting a disastrous battle against an invisible enemy, continued to criticise the messenger, not the message. At the height of lockdown the culture minister, Oliver Dowden, accused the BBC of political bias over a programme on the government’s failure to provide enough personal protective equipment, not by refuting the central allegations but by an ad-hominem attack on the political affiliations of the NHS workers interviewed. Public support for the BBC may be high now but it is volatile, especially in a climate where doubts over veracity and impartiality are the norm. Today, Davie made a commitment to this impartiality in accepting the job. In welcoming the new director general, Dowden also lost no time in saying that he was encouraged by Davie’s “commitment to impartiality at the BBC as well as the need for further reform”. The closest Davie has come to scandal – the Radio 2 phone hoax involving Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross and the (shelved) closure of 6 Music – seem almost quaint next to the difficulties ahead, though editorial oversight and financial management are likely to be at the heart of those challenges. While Moore is expected to continue as a trusted head of content, it is in news output that Davie should look to shore up his credentials. Is there someone like Lewis, an award-winning journalist with huge management experience, internally? The independence of the BBC is at the core of every crisis it has ever faced, and Johnson’s government has made no secret that the BBC is in its sights. Chairman David Clementi has confirmed that he will be departing early next year with the government understood to be keen to get its own man (or even, heaven forbid woman) in the job. An ultra-marathon runner, Davie has been underestimated before. He caused much harrumphing when he took over BBC radio from the revered Jenny Abramsky, a 39-year BBC lifer. Yet he won so many plaudits for his tenure that he got to pretend to be DG for a few months afterwards. Now he gets to do it for real. We all need him to prove that he has both the vision and street smarts for the job.