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UK ministers have picked veteran television executive Samir Shah as BBC chair to replace Richard Sharp, the former Goldman Sachs banker who resigned earlier this year.
Shah has had a 40-year career in TV and previously served as a BBC non-executive director in 2007 as well as in positions including head of current affairs.
He will face a series of immediate challenges as head of the BBC board, including the renegotiation of the licence fee in the run-up to the renewal of the publicly funded corporation’s charter in 2027.
Confirming the appointment after the Financial Times earlier reported the decision, culture secretary Lucy Frazer said Shah had a “clear ambition to see the BBC succeed in a rapidly changing media landscape, and I have no doubt he will provide the support and scrutiny that the BBC needs to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future”.
Shah said the BBC “is, without doubt, one of the greatest contributions we have made to global culture and one of our strongest calling cards on soft power”.
The BBC chair — a political appointment made by the government and signed off by the prime minister — acts as an intermediary between the corporation and ministers often critical of its news coverage, size and budget.
The government had been under pressure to avoid an obviously political appointment after widespread criticism of the process that chose Sharp.
He quit after an investigation found that he had breached public appointment rules by failing to declare help provided to then prime minister Boris Johnson that led to him securing an £800,000 loan.
Shah has extensive links with the Conservative party, including serving on the government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which was set up to investigate racial inequality in the UK.
People close to the selection process said that Shah also had the backing of Oliver Dowden, who was culture secretary when Shah served as chair of London’s Museum of the Home.
At the time, the museum’s board of trustees controversially decided to retain a statue of slave trade beneficiary Robert Geffrye. Dowden wrote to Shah ahead of the decision, saying he was opposed to its removal.
However, unlike Sharp, Shah was appointed after a lengthy search by external headhunters and officials have vetted a wide field of candidates to try to avoid accusations of a politicised process.
Many potential candidates declined to put their names forward due to expectations that the job would involve considerable firefighting in the run-up to the corporation’s charter renewal. Shah will appear before MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee for pre-appointment scrutiny next week.
Ministers are planning to choose the lowest possible increase in the licence fee allowable under an agreement struck in 2022. That deal froze the licence fee for two years — meaning a fall in funding for the BBC given soaring inflation — and then set further increases at the rate of inflation.
However, Frazer told the Financial Times this year that she was concerned about the extra burden on households from increasing the licence fee amid the cost of living crisis. On Thursday, she is expected to confirm plans to set this at the lowest rate possible.
In an interview last month, Lord Michael Grade, chair of the media watchdog Ofcom and a former BBC chair, described the licence fee as a “regressive tax”.
Shah has in the past criticised the BBC’s scale and organisational culture as a “monolithic posture that makes it appear anti-competitive”.
The India-born 71-year-old has run his own production company, Juniper Communications, since the late 1990s, making shows for the corporation as well as other channels.
He joined London Weekend Television in 1979 as a researcher, where he rose to editor of a range of current affairs programmes.
His half brother Mohit Bakaya is controller of the BBC’s flagship station, Radio 4.
As BBC chair, Shah will oversee several investigations into scandals involving presenters such as Huw Edwards and Tim Westwood. The job comes with an annual £160,000 in pay for three to four days of work a week, over a four-year term.
Other candidates for the job included current acting chair Dame Elan Closs Stephens, who is popular within the BBC but has been recently forced to defend its position to ministers including Frazer over how the broadcaster describes Hamas and its reporting on the Israel-Gaza war.
