Alan Yentob
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| Alan Yentob | |
 Alan Yentob and Grayson Perry at private view of Gilbert & George retrospective, Tate Modern
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| Born | 11 March 1947 |
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| Occupation | Television executive & broadcaster |
| Religious beliefs | Jewish |
Alan Yentob (born March 11, 1947) is a British television executive. He was born into a Jewish family in London of Iraqi descent, and was educated at The King's School, Ely. After initially joining the BBC as a trainee in the BBC World Service in 1968, he has spent his entire professional career with the Corporation. Alan has two children, Bella (13) and Harry (17).
[edit] Career
In 1973, Yentob became a producer and director working on the high-profile documentary series Omnibus, for which in 1975 he made a famous film called Cracked Actor about the musician David Bowie. He went on later in 1975 to initiate another famous BBC documentary series, Arena, of which he was to remain the Editor until 1985, and the series itself still returns for semi-regular editions as of 2006.
He left Arena to become the BBC's Head of Music and Arts, a position he occupied until 1987, when he was promoted to Controller of BBC Two, one of the youngest channel controllers in the BBC's history. Under Alan's five year stewardship BBC Two was re-vitalised and he introduced many innovations in programming such as The Late Show, Have I Got News For You, Absolutely Fabulous and Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers.
Yentob was rewarded for his success in 1993 when he was promoted to Controller of BBC One, responsible for the output of the BBC's premier channel. His time here was seen as another success and he remained in the post for four years until 1996, when he was promoted again to become BBC Television's overall Director of Programmes.
This appointment was only a brief one, however, before a re-organisation of the BBC's Executive Committee led to the creation of a new post, filled by Yentob, of Director of Drama, Entertainment and Children's. This placed Yentob in overall supervision of the BBC's output in these three genres across all media - radio, television and Internet. He occupied this post until June 2004, when new BBC Director-General Mark Thompson re-organised the BBC's executive committee and promoted Yentob to the new post of BBC Creative Director, responsible for overseeing BBC creative output across television, radio and interactive services.
In the 2000s, he has also begun fronting BBC programmes as a presenter. These have included a series on the life of Leonardo da Vinci and a new regular arts series, Imagine.
One episode of Imagine has Alan explore the World Wide Web, Blogging, User created content, and even the use of Wikipedia, exploring people's motives and satisfaction that can be had from sharing information on such a large scale. His own blog, created during the making of the episode, was subsequently deleted and purged.
Unfortunately Yentob's reputation has become slightly tarnished of late, after it was revealed that his participation in some of the interviews for Imagine had been faked. Yentob has been warned not to do this again, but otherwise not disciplined, much to the disgruntlement of some who have seen more junior staff lose their jobs for lesser misdemeanours.[1]
Yentob's fifteen-year-old son Jacob Walker Yentob was wounded in a stabbing incident in September 2006. Jacob and a friend were stabbed after refusing to hand over valuables to a robber who knocked on the door at the family's four-storey Victorian home in Notting Hill. Both teenagers needed hospital attention after the attack. Yentob has one other child, his daughter Isabella, and is married to Philippa Walker, a television producer.[2]
In October 2007, Yentob was once again the centre of a controversy about faked interviews for "Imagine" when he substituted himself for another film-maker who had conducted interviews with singer Scott Walker.
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[edit] External links
| Media offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Jonathan Powell |
Controller of BBC One 1992-1996 |
Succeeded by Michael Jackson |
| Preceded by Graeme MacDonald |
Controller of BBC Two 1987-1993 |
Succeeded by Michael Jackson |
