Mr. Sharp will take over from David Clementi, whose four-year term ends next month. Many older Britons will remember Mr. Clementi as the chairman who, last summer, ended free TV licenses for most people over 75, saying the broadcaster couldn’t afford it. Previously, the government had covered those costs, but that has ended. Mr. Clementi argued it was necessary to charge older viewers to make up for the lost money without cutting more programs and services.
As it is, the organization has been slashing jobs as part of a 2016 plan to save £800 million. Last year, it announced 520 job losses at BBC News, and another 600 job cuts from regional services in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Mr. Sharp and Mr. Davie will play critical roles as the BBC’s charter, which sets out its mission and public purpose, comes up for an interim review in the next couple of years and a complete renewal in 2027.
Mr. Sharp, who spent more than two decades at Goldman Sachs until 2007 and was a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee from 2013 until 2019, has reportedly been advising his former employee at Goldman, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor of the Exchequer.
The BBC faces three key challenges, according to Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, the director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: how to reach a younger audience and shore up its future commercial success; how to quell concerns that it is not diverse, both politically and ethnically; and the third, which is a particular task for the chairman, how to ensure its future independence.
“The BBC is and remains a political creation, and a precondition of its existence is that the BBC manages to convince not just the public, but also politicians, that it is in fact delivering on its role and remit, and that it should maintain its independence,” Mr. Nielsen said.
