Liz Forgan

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Dame Elizabeth "Liz" Anne Lucy Forgan, DBE (born 1944) is a British journalist and television executive who was educated at St Hugh's College, Oxford.

Forgan was a founding commissioning editor and then Director of Programmes at the UK's Channel 4 from 1981 to 1990.^[1]

She initially worked on newspapers starting with Teheran Journal's as Arts Editor 1967-68, at the Hampstead and Highgate Express 1969-74, and on London's Evening Standard 1974-78 (and later as a columnist 1997-98).

She joined the BBC in 1993 to become Managing Director, BBC Network Radio where she developed the format for BBC Radio Five Live and launched the DAB digital radio service. She left the BBC in February 1996 over a disagreement with John Birt, then BBC Director General, over the decision to move BBC Radio News from Broadcasting House to a site four miles away.^[2]

She was editor of The Guardian's women's pages from 1978 to 1982, a Guardian columnist during 1997 and 1998, becoming a non-executive director of the Guardian Media Group^[3] from 1998, and promoted to become the sixth Chair of The Scott Trust in 2003^[4]. Since April 2001, the Chair of the National Heritage Memorial Fund since 2001 and Heritage Lottery Fund^[5].

She is also board member of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama^[6], Trustee of the Royal Anniversary Trust, a former Board Member of the British Film Institute, a Trustee of the Media Trust and of the Phoenix Trust, and Chair of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Liz Forgan waw awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to Radio Broadcasting in 2006 and previously awarded the OBE in 1998 also for services to Radio Broadcasting.

[edit] See Also

Jill Tweedie for details of the National Portrait Gallery Group portrait of Forgan, Tweedie, Polly Toynbee and Mary Stott (editors of Guardian's Women's Page) and Posy Simmonds