One of the most influential broadcasters and TV executives of the last 50 years who spent his entire career at the BBC
Alan Yentob, who has died aged 78, had serious claims to being the most influential broadcaster in Britain over the last 50 years. There are very few successful shows on the BBC – with whom he spent his entire career – which did not bear his influence as producer, commissioner or presenter. They range through high culture to showbiz, from the Arena and Imagine arts documentaries to the more demotic Noel’s House Party, Strictly Come Dancing, Holby City and Ballykissangel, taking in Have I Got News for You, Bake Off and Absolutely Fabulous on the way.
It was a formidable track record, leading to a series of executive positions within the corporation, which almost inevitably created critics at the BBC and, more poisonously, the conservative press. Its continuous denigration of him and through him the larger target of the BBC itself, ultimately contributed to his resignation following his outside chairmanship of the Kids Company charity, which collapsed in a welter of debt in 2015.
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