In recent months, Matt Brittin, the Doctor Who-loving fitness fanatic and former Google executive, has made no secret of his desire to make the jump from big tech to the world of broadcasting.
At the end of last year, he told an event filled with some of television’s most senior figures that he had wanted to break into their industry “for a very long time”.
As the BBC’s new director general, Brittin has not only fulfilled that goal. He has parachuted into the British media’s most powerful – and treacherous – job.
The 57-year-old may be a big believer in the transformative power of sleep – one of Brittin’s favourite books is Why We Sleep, by the neuroscientist, Matthew Walker – but his new job is guaranteed to ensure he has less of it.
Brittin, who left Google as its leader in Europe, the Middle East and Africa last year, was not among the names initially touted to succeed Tim Davie.
When Davie announced his resignation last year, it was widely thought that a woman would be next to lead “Auntie”.
However, in a sign of the pressures and scrutiny placed on the BBC’s leader, obvious candidates – mostly women – did not apply. Meanwhile, Deborah Turness, the former BBC News boss widely seen as Davie’s preferred successor, resigned alongside her boss after a row over alleged BBC bias.
With concerns growing over how perilous the job had become, Brittin’s status as a senior figure from one of the world’s most powerful companies proved it still had a significant draw.
It is not hard to see the BBC board’s attraction to a commercial, big tech figure, as the corporation seeks to make a decisive shift towards digital platforms and cut costs by using technology.
“He’s what they’re looking for,” said Mark Oliver, a former BBC strategy chief. “Someone who’s an operational leader, plus an ability to perform in a public sphere and deal with government.
“He seems to have been generally well-liked by the people who worked with him at Google. He fits.”
As some insiders have already pointed out, however, he arrives at New Broadcasting House with no broadcasting experience – and some believe he is in for a rude awakening.
“It would be a big culture shock for him,” according to one BBC figure. Not because the corporation was bureaucratic, they said, but compared with Google “there is no money whatsoever, [the] BBC is highly regulated, and as a public service BBC audiences expect no cuts”.
Given Brittin’s CV, Claire Enders, the founder of Enders Analysis, said it was a coup for the BBC and he would have the respect of government.
“It’s quite extraordinary to have someone of that stature who has no necessity whatsoever for status,” she said. “He’s a very thoughtful and calm person who would never have applied if he hadn’t considered this deeply. I think there is an element of real public-spiritedness.
“It is very brave for someone to step into that kind of 24/7 position.”
There is no question that Brittin, a member of the British Olympic rowing team in 1988, will immediately find himself navigating treacherous waters.
Not only is the BBC facing the same changes in consumption disrupting all traditional media. It also faces major political challenges – the immediate talks over its funding model and the near constant, often partisan hostility over its funding and its coverage.
He will be working in an environment in which the BBC has already announced a major savings programme running into the hundreds of millions, as the licence fee has eroded in value.
And that all comes before he has had to deal with the crises that never seem to be far from the director general’s desk.
While Brittin ended up in big tech, he is more of a business strategist than a tech bro. He started life as a McKinsey consultant, before moving to Trinity Mirror, the publisher now renamed Reach. “After seven years [as a] strategy consultant, you’d think I’d have spotted a strategically challenged industry,” he said of his time there.
By 2007, he had been recruited by Google to run its UK operations. There he stayed for almost two decades before leaving last year for what he called a “mini-gap year”.
His time with big tech naturally comes with baggage. While broadcasters and publishers worry about the lack of regulation around online content, Brittin has been critical of the extent of European regulation.
Some very senior broadcasting figures also want to see the BBC prioritise British-owned tech like the iPlayer, rather than be “captured by Silicon Valley”.
“To what extent can someone who is quintessentially big tech help solve problems without thinking ‘big tech’, as opposed to British tech,” said one. “You tend to feel amongst the elites in the UK that, well, it’s all over. Google now runs everything forevermore.”
He faced some public scrutiny at Google – most notably a notorious 2016 Commons select committee appearance in which he was questioned about Google’s small corporation tax bill. During the exchanges, he appeared to suggest he did not know how much he was paid.
He has also been challenged about allowing the likes of far-right activist Tommy Robinson on YouTube. “Obviously, I find his point of view on the world abhorrent,” he said in 2019. “There is a responsibility here that balances freedom of speech, versus stopping hate speech and incitement to violence.”
Such challenges will now be an almost daily occurrence.
Unlike at Google and its mountains of cash, the BBC job comes with difficult financial decisions. It is very likely staff and programmes will have to go as part of the current round of cuts.
The big lacuna in his CV is editorial experience. “What happens when the next Bafta fuck up happens, because you have to be very fleet of foot in those situations,” said one production executive, referring to the BBC’s failure to cut out a racial slur from its coverage of the ceremony.
Brittin will be helped by a new deputy director general, which is now very likely to be someone steeped in editorial decision-making.
Some insiders believe that, in effect, outsourcing responsibility for editorial to a deputy is “lunacy”, although others see it as a consequence of just how broad the top BBC job has now become.
When asked to sum up his leadership philosophy on a podcast, Brittin revealed another quality he will need in the director general’s chair. “Listening well is the most important thing,” he said.
Running the BBC, Brittin will have no shortage of people willing to share their thoughts on the institution. The key challenge for the broadcasting convert will be tuning into the right voices among the cacophony.
