Will Wyatt

Will Wyatt (born 7 January 1942^[1]) was formerly Managing Director, BBC Television (1991-6) and Chief Executive BBC Broadcast (1996-9). He was later a company director and media consultant. Wyatt was born in Oxford and educated at S.S.Philip and James primary school and Magdalen College School, Oxford before winning a scholarship to and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He began work as a trainee journalist on the Sheffield Telegraph and joined BBC Radio News as a sub-editor in 1965 before moving to BBC Television, working for the Presentation Department as producer of Points of View, The Fifties and Storyteller, before joining the daily arts and media programme Late Night Line-Up

He then originated and edited Edition, presented by Kenneth Alsop, The Book Programme with Robert Robinson and Don't Quote Me. He produced a number of documentaries including All the Buildings Fit to Print about Nikolaus Pevsner and was executive producer of They've Shot Kennedy, Good Night and Good Luck and The Scars of Autumn. He produced B.Traven: A Mystery Solved and wrote a real life literary detective story The Man Who Was B.Traven. (Cape, 1980). In USA this was published as The Secret of the Sierra Madre (Doubleday)

By 1978 he was Assistant Head of the Presentation Department, whose output included The Old Grey Whistle Test, The Hollywood Greats and Barry Norman's Film... programme. From 1981 to 1988 he was Head of Documentary Features, starting 40 Minutes, Crimewatch, Food and Drink, Comrades, All Our Working Lives, The Duty Men,Queens'- A Cambridge College, Around the World in Eighty Days with Michael Palin and negotiated and executive produced Elizabeth R, a documentary portrait of the Queen, produced by Edward Mirzoeff, the highest rating documentary ever shown y the BBC.

In 1991 he became Managing Director of BBC Network Television ,after a spell as Assistant Managing Director. As MD he led a revival in drama - Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice,Between the Lines, Buddha of Suburbia, Our Friends in the North, Ballykissangel,This Life, Hamish Macbeth and Dalziel and Pascoe - and a strong programme performance in other genres - in comedy, Goodnight Sweetheart, The Wrong Trousers, Absolutely Fabulous, Men Behaving Badly, Knowing Me Knowing You,The Fast Show,The Vicar of Dibley, and in documentary series People's Century,Death of Yugoslavia and Nazis- A Warning From History. After five years he was made Chief Executive of BBC Broadcast, responsible for all BBC radio networks and television channels in the UK. During this time he oversaw the launch of BBC Online and the BBC's digital television channels, the creation of the BBC's partnership in UKTV and BBC America.

He was also deputy to the Director-General John Birt.

Wyatt retired from the BBC at the end of 1999, becoming chairman of the London Institute, comprising Central St.Martins College of Art, Camberwell College of Art, Chelsea College of Art and London College of Fashion,London College of Printing ( now Communications), leading it to become the University of the Arts London www.arts.ac.uk/. He was awarded the CBE in 2000 and was President of the Royal Television Society from 2000 to 2004. From 2002-7 he was Chairman of Human Capital Limited, a media strategy and research consultancy. His second book,'The Fun Factory - A Life in the BBC was published by Aurum Press in 2003.

In 2007 he produced the Wyatt Report, an investigation into clips from A Year With the Queen being shown to journalists which apparently showed the Queen storming out of a session with American photographer Annie Leibovitz. The BBC subsequently admitted that the scenes used in the trailer had been edited out of sequence,^[2] leading to the resignation of RDF's Chief Creative Officer Stephen Lambert, BBC One Controller Peter Fincham, and Fincham's Head of Publicity, Jane Fletcher, following the report's publication on October 5.^[3]

Wyatt was a director of Coral Eurobet from 2001-3 and also served on the British Horseracing Board's commission into the conditions of stable and stud staff. He was on the board of Racecourse Media Group from its start in 2004 and chaired it from 2007-12 , the company owned by thirty racecourses, which operates the Racing UK television channel and manages their interest in the Turf TV service to betting shops. Wyatt was a director of Vitec Group plc. from 2002 -11. He was chairman of the Teaching Awards Trust from 2008 to 2013 www.teachingawards.com/ and a trustee of the Services Sound and Vision Corporation 2008-13. In 2013 he joined the board of the Welsh National Opera.www.wno.org.uk/

The documentary film Toni and Rosi, which he produced and directed with Todd Murray, was transmitted on BBC4 in January 2012. Will Wyatt married Jane Bagenal in April 1966. They have two daughters.

References

External links

• Will Wyatt at the Internet Movie Database.
• ZoomInfo web summary.
• Review of his autobiography from New Statesman.