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New BBC director general appointed

22 November 2012 20:16 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The British state-run broadcaster BBC has appointed the corporation's new director general, following the resignation of the corporation’s former boss earlier this month after just 54 days in the job, APA reports quoting Press TV.

Tony Hall, the BBC's former director of news and the current chief executive of the Royal Opera House, is expected to start his job as the new director general of the corporation in early March 2013.

BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten said Hall was "the right person to lead the BBC out of its current crisis".

Hall succeeded the BBC’s ex-director general George Entwistle, who stood down on November 10 in the wake of a Newsnight investigation that wrongly implicated a senior former Tory in the North Wales child abuse scandal.

The corporation also faced heavy criticisms for its decision to award a £450,000 pay-off, twice the minimum due to its former boss, who had only taken up the post in September 2012.

The appointment of Hall, who was head of BBC News and Current Affairs between 1996 and 2001, was approved on November 22, on the same day that MPs on the public accounts committee questioned two BBC executives and a member of the broadcaster's governing body over the size of the payment to Entwistle.