John Birt
John Birt, Baron Birt (born 10 December 1944), served as the Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from 1992 to 2000, having previously been deputy director-general since 1987. He also served as the Director of Programmes at London Weekend Television between 1982 and 1987. Sir John was awarded the life peerage in 1999, and took his seat in March 2000. Birt was born in Liverpool and educated at St Mary's College, Liverpool and St Catherine's College, Oxford.
Birt became a hate figure for many on the Left, who were often still lamenting the sacking of Alasdair Milne by the Thatcher government in 1987 - his complex internal market reforms of the BBC were hated by many of its employees, and were dismantled by his successor Greg Dyke. Dennis Potter, in particular, elevated Birt to the level of a folk devil shortly before his death. However, it has been convincingly argued that without those reforms and Birt's relatively Tory-friendly persona, the BBC would not have secured its charter renewal in the 1990s, and Birt was responsible for a major modernisation of much BBC programming, not least the removal of Simon Bates, Dave Lee Travis and other veteran DJs from Radio 1, which was reformed as a much more youth-orientated station, and the demise of the Paul Daniels Magic Show and similar outmoded variety formats on BBC1.
