Mark Byford - Career With The BBC

Career With The BBC

In 1981, aged just 22, he produced the Royal Television Society’s Regional News programme of the Year – a Look North special on unemployment in the north of England.

The following year, in 1982, he produced the award-winning edition again – this time with South Today in Southampton. In 1987 he became Head of News at BBC Bristol before becoming Home Editor BBC News and Current Affairs responsible for all television network newsgathering coverage across the UK. There he led the BBC's coverage of the Clapham rail crash, the Kegworth M1 air crash, the Lockerbie bombing, Hillsborough and the Marchioness riverboat disaster. In 1990 he returned to Leeds as Head of Centre. In 1991 he became Controller Regional Broadcasting aged 33.

He joined the BBC’s Board of Management in 1996 as Director, Regional Broadcasting responsible for all the BBC's activities across the UK, outside of London. In 1998 he became Director of the BBC World Service and then Head of the BBC’s multi-media Global News Division in 2002.

In January 2004 he became Deputy Director General of the BBC but within three weeks of his appointment Greg Dyke resigned as Director General, following the publication of the Hutton Report. Byford was appointed by the Board of Governors as Acting Director-General, a role that he undertook for five months. During this period, Byford had a lead role in producing "Building Public Value", the BBC's Charter renewal manifesto.

When Mark Thompson was appointed Director General in June 2004, Byford's role was enlarged to take responsibility for all the BBC’s journalism at UK, international and local levels -the first time such a post leading the BBC's Journalism at all levels across radio,television and online, had been established. In July 2006, he also become responsible for BBC Sport.

In June 2008 the BBC's governing body, the BBC Trust in a direct criticism of BBC News instructed Byford and his Editors to "improve the range, clarity and precision of its network coverage of the different UK nations and regions". The Trust said the BBC was "falling short of its own high standards" and in part failing to meet its core purpose of helping inform democracy.

As Chair of the BBC's Editorial Standards Board, Byford led the Executive's response to the faked competitions scandals that engulfed the Corporation in 2007 including designing the special training programme "Safeguarding Trust" which more than 17,000 members of staff had to attend. In November 2008, he led the investigation into the Brand/Ross affair and produced the special report that was published subsequently by the BBC Trust. He is a Fellow of The Radio Academy.

In July 2010 it was revealed that Byford had flown on business to the World Cup in South Africa business class at a cost of £4,878. This came against a background of further cuts in BBC News, for which Byford was responsible. On 12 October 2010 it was announced Byford was leaving the Corporation after thirty two years and the Deputy Director General post closed as part of the BBC's cutbacks in senior management costs.Byford left the Executive Board of the BBC at the end of March 2011, and his BBC employment ended in the early summer after he led the Royal Wedding coverage, reportedly with a redundancy/notice package of between £800,000 and £900,000.

On his retirement the Guardian newspaper commented:- "If he has a public profile at all it is because Byford came to symbolise the apparent excesses of top executive pay at the corporation. There he was, grey man with a job for life, half a million pounds in salary and, because he had been at the BBC so long without ever leaving, an uncapped two-thirds final salary pension entitlement and no obvious market rate comparator to justify such riches. It was very easy to put the question, as even many lower ranking BBC staff did – who else would pay Mark Byford £500,000 and for what? – knowing there was no very good answer." However, the remainder of that article suggested that his presence might be missed greatly at the Corporation. That opinion appeared highly prophetic in the light of the two major Newsnight scandals - concerning Sir Jimmy Savile and Lord McAlpine respectively - which engulfed the BBC within 18 months of Byford's departure. Both of those incidents led to widespread adverse criticism of high level management of journalism within the BBC and were surrounded by suggestions that the Director General of the day was not sufficiently informed about issues highly significant for the repution of the Corporation.