Greg Dyke

Greg Dyke (born 20 May 1947) was the Director-General of the BBC (salary £500,000) from January 2000 until 29 January 2004 when he resigned following the Hutton Inquiry.

New Labour Connection

Dyke has been described as being 'a Blairite before Mr Blair'.[1] Although he left Labour prior to the 2005 General Election (in which he supported the Liberal Democrats) Dyke has been a long time active supporter of the Labour Party and in 1977 he attempted to win a seat on the Greater London Council for Labour at Putney. In later years he was a financial donor to the party.

Donations to New Labour

He has given donations of more than £5,000 to the Labour Party in 1997 and £50,000 in 1998. He helped fund Tony Blair's campaign to become the Labour Party leader in 1994 and gave £5000 to Mo Mowlam's research fund in the same year.

Previously he was the Chairman and Chief Executive at Pearson Television, alongside Lord Stevenson, another Friend of Tony Blair. In 1998 he was paid £768,000. His personal wealth is estimated at £14 million.

He made most of his money in a director's share scheme at London Weekend Television (where he was Chief Executive) in the early 1990's. On joining the BBC he sold Granada shares worth £6 million and made £800,000 from his Pearson shares. He has a second home in Dorset with its own stables, swimming pool and football pitch.

He is one of a number of important Labour Party figures who worked at LWT, including Peter Mandelson, Lord Bragg, Trevor Phillips, Gerry Robinson and Charles Leadbetter (Demos).[2]

BBC Years

In the past, Dyke has referred to the BBC being 'little more than Murdoch's poodle'.[3] Before being installed at the BBC, Blair put Dyke in charge of the Government's NHS Charter Advisory Group. In his first speech at the BBC he told his staff that if they didn't like what he was going to do, "don't stay at the BBC and moan...go somewhere else!".

In the wake of the Hutton Inquiry, Dyke resigned apologizing for the mistakes in its criticism of the government. He offered no apology however for BBC's pro war coverage. On his resignation, he received a payoff of £488,416 on top of £321,000 in salary and benefits, making a total of £809,416.[4]

Falling Out

After he was made to resign from the BBC, however, he has suggested 'he regrets giving the Labour party £55,000 in donations; that history "will not be on Blair's side"; and that the prime minister is not a man to be trusted.'

In serialisations in the Observer and Mail on Sunday of his forthcoming memoirs, Mr Dyke accuses Tony Blair of "duping" the country into the Iraq war, and says he was "either incompetent ... or lied when he told the House of Commons he didn't know what the 45-minute claim meant".

Mr Dyke reveals that the prime minister wrote to him and the former BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies, the day before war began, in an attempt to "bully" the BBC into a more supportive stance. And he accuses him of reneging on a deal, made to Mr Davies, that no heads should roll at the corporation. Within 36 hours of the Hutton inquiry, both Mr Dyke and Mr Davies had left following an officially sanctioned attack on them by Alastair Campbell...

...and Cherie Blair, who gave him the cold shoulder despite 20 years of friendship, and whom he reveals, asked him, when he was on the football team's board, for a discount on a Manchester United shirt for her son Euan. ^[5]

In the Company of Moguls

In 2004, after being made to resign from BBC, Dyke went to work on the right-Zionist Israeli American media mogul Haim Saban's German TV company ProSiebenSat.1.[6].

While Dyke's partner, Sue Howes, had declared at the Edinburgh television festival: "Greg would never work for Murdoch. Greg's got principles, thank God", Principles did not get in the way of Dyke signing a £500,000 book deal with Rupert Murdoch's publishing house HarperCollins.[7]

Career

• London Weekend Television - 1977; editor-in-chief, TV-am 1983-84; director of programmes, TVS 1984-87; director of programmes, London Weekend Television, 1987-90, managing director 1990-91; group chief executive, LWT (Holdings) plc 1991-94;
• Pearson Television 1995-99 chief executive
• BBC - 1999-2000, deputy director-general; 2000-04, director general
• Channel 4 Television 1988-92
• BSkyB - 1995 Director ;
• Independent Television Association - 1992-94 chairman,
• GMTV - 1993-94
• Channel Five Broadcasting - 1997-99
• ITN - 1990-92 non-executive director

Affiliations

• Media Trust
• BBC

Related Articles

1. Emily Bell, Janine Gibson and Georgina Henry,At the heart of it: a triangle that links Dyke to Blair to Murdoch, The Guardian, January 30, 2004
2. ^Sarah Hall and Matt Wells, No 10 unmoved by Dyke attack, The Guardian, August 30, 2004