WHETHER OR NOT Mr. Carleton Greene makes a good head
of the BBC, it is good to see a dedicated BBC man get the post; the practice of handing such jobs around to the faceless men from the Forces is a thoroughly bad one. I have been hearing the contrary argu- ment put: that nobody who has been with the BBC for over ten years ought to be put in charge of it, on the grounds that nobody with any real talent or self-respect would have stayed in the Corporation for that long; and it is certainly true that the crawling and empire-building of the executives is the despair of the honest toilers below. But if this is to be broken down, it will have to be done by somebody who knows the organi- sation thoroughly enough to be able to weed out the 'administrators' who have no talent for anything except interference. Any- body coming to take charge of the Corpora- tion from outside would take years to do this, because in the nature of things it is the 'administrators' who appear at first glance to be efficient, and who have the time to spare to lay on the flattery. To judge by Mr. Greene's past pronouncements he has the right ideas; if he can show that he also has the right degree of ruthlessness he will do the community a service.
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