Jacob As BBC Director-General
As Haley departed, it was apparent that Jacob was likely to succeed him in the role of Director-General. Jacob was well respected by the senior staff of the BBC, much more so than the other candidate George Barnes, then the controller of BBC television. (Barnes had been appointed Controller of Television in 1950, despite having no enthusiasm for visual broadcasting, and was not popular within the BBC. Indeed the BBC's regional controllers informed the Chairman, Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, that they would resign simultaneously if Barnes was chosen over Jacob as Haley's replacement). However, Jacob was still officially seconded to the Ministry of Defence, and so a member of the Board of Management, Sir Basil Nicholls, was made acting Director-General until Jacob could be released back to the BBC. Jacob eventually entered his new job on 1 December 1952.
Jacob's tenure coincided with the rise of television, which was beginning to displace radio as the main broadcast medium (sales of Sound-and-Television licences overtook those of Sound-only licences in 1957). In contrast to Haley's hard-bitten era, Jacob's was a time of financial prosperity for the BBC. Indeed, he initially found it hard to persuade senior staff that money was available and that there was ample opportunity to spend it in developing television to the full.
Jacob was an enthusiast of news and current affairs programming and was keen to continue the BBC's tradition of accuracy and impartiality in its journalism. However, this goal led him to misinterpret the intentions of the controversial Editor of News, Tahu Hole, who was inclined to abuse the impartiality principle to avoid management responsibilities. In fact, it was only in 1958, by which time BBC News was being put to shame by its competitor Independent Television News, that Jacob finally noticed Hole's shortcomings and moved him into an administrative post. Jacob did, however, campaign for the abolition of the restrictive Fourteen-Day Rule that prevented broadcast analysis of topics that were to be debated in parliament within the next fourteen days (the Rule was finally suspended in December 1956). Also during Jacob's time as Director-General was the first showing of Panorama which is the world's longest-running current affairs series as of 2012.
Jacob's approach to news coverage was not always popular with the government. His former mentor Winston Churchill in particular had never liked the BBC's journalistic impartiality, thinking that broadcast media should be a tool of government rather than a forum of political analysis and criticism. Churchill's successor as Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, objected to the BBC's reporting of the 1956 Suez Crisis. Eden insisted that unfavorable reports of the British bombardment of Egypt should not be broadcast to the world on the BBC's Overseas Service, but Jacob refused to compromise:-
| “ | If the BBC is found for the first time to be suppressing significant items of news, its reputation would rapidly vanish and the harm to the national interest would enormously outweigh any damage caused by displaying to the world the workings of a free democracy. | ” |
Eden responded by cutting the budget of the Overseas Service (which was, like today's World Service, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office rather than the Licence fee which funds the rest of the BBC). However, this punitive measure was lifted after Eden's resignation in 1957 with no further restrictions on the BBC's journalistic freedom.
Jacob was replaced as Director-General in 1960 by Hugh Carleton Greene. Though less radical (and certainly less well-known) than Greene, he saw the BBC successfully through many significant events in British broadcasting: the surge in television viewership (aided especially by the coverage of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952); the introduction of the competing ITV service in 1955; the gradual modernisation of some old eccentric practices (the aforementioned Fourteen-Day Rule and the Toddlers' Truce closedown period in the early evening). It was also mostly on the strength of Jacob's work that the 1960 Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting recommended that the third television channel should be offered to the BBC, eventually materialising as BBC2 in 1964.
Jacob's date of retirement was 31 December 1959. The following day, he was awarded the GBE in the New Year's Honours.
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