George Entwistle | MediaGuardian 100 2012
Job: director general, BBC
Age: 50
Industry: broadcasting, digital media
2011 ranking: 26
Having spent the best part of a quarter of a century at the BBC, George Entwistle's ascent to the corporation's top job is hardly an overnight success. But at the same time it still feels like a rapid rise for the man who did not feature in the MediaGuardian 100 until last year.
Newly installed as the BBC's 15th director general — he officially starts his new job on Monday – the former editor of BBC2's Newsnight has been charged by the man who appointed him, BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten, with making the corporation "10% or 20% better".
That will be hard to evaluate, but his other challenge is to keep the BBC relevant at a time of unprecedented technological change and with less money than it had before. Plus there is the small matter of securing the BBC's charter renewal in 2017. The hard work starts now.
Entwistle is in charge of the UK's most influential media organisation with 22,000 staff and total revenues which topped £5bn for the first time last year.
The preferred candidate of his predecessor, Mark Thompson, Entwistle pipped chief operating officer Caroline Thomson to the top job, so the wait for the first female director general goes on.
Entwistle joined the BBC in 1989 as a news trainee and went on to work on Panorama, Tomorrow's World and Newsnight, where he would tell colleagues that their job was to ask "How can we fuck the government today?"
He later graduated to executive roles including head of knowledge commissioning and acting controller of BBC4. Last year, he was appointed the director of Vision, overseeing all of the corporation's TV channels and programme-making departments,
As well as completing a £700m round of cost-cutting begun by Thompson's Delivering Quality First review, Entwistle will have to work out what to do with BBC Worldwide and the BBC's sprawling in-house production base. He has pledged to return the BBC to its creative roots and cut back further on bureaucracy.
An unknown quantity as a leader, spokesman or negotiator, Entwistle will need all those skills when it comes to dealing with MPs, ministers and an invariably hostile press.
More immediately he has to find a new director of Vision – and as with his new job, the old one pays rather less than it used to. Entwistle's salary of £450,000 compares with the £617,000 earned by Thompson.
Entwistle was closely involved in the BBC's diamond jubilee coverage which prompted thousands of complaints over the way it handled the Thames flotilla. The new DG will be hoping to deal with future furores rather better.
In the words of former BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival this year: "Beware of the royals. It's almost always something to do with the royal family that gets you into trouble." In that respect, Entwistle is already ahead of the game.
This article was amended on 17 September 2012 to correct the fact that George Entwistle is the 15th director general of the BBC, not the 16th as originally stated