Patricia Hodgson is many people's favourite to become the next Chairman of the BBC (though having a Tory Chair and Vice Chair might be problematic).
She is a former Head of Policy and Planning at the BBC and former Chief Executive of the Independent Television Commission.  
She sets out her stall on Hutton in the Financial Times:

Hutton Report: A challenge for democracy
By Patricia Hodgson

Top resignations at the BBC may feed the headlines. But the real
implications of Lord Hutton's Report, with its exoneration of government
and its attack on poor controls at the BBC, are most profound in relation
to the future of democracy in Britain.

Around 70 per cent of people cite television and radio as their main
source of news in the UK, compared with just 17 per cent for newspapers.
The BBC dominates television and radio news production and consumption.
News is not profitable for commercial broadcasters. Economic reality
means that, if Britain wants in- depth news and political coverage on
popular networks, then it must look to a publicly-funded BBC. Sky News
and ITN provide vital competition but they cannot command the best
resourced news operation in the world nor public attention to the same
extent. The BBC exists to set standards for others and play a vital role
in our democracy.

It is a heavy responsibility. And, in the Kelly affair, the BBC failed
important tests. The question now is what actions follow. Tessa Jowell
has said the role of the governors will be considered as part of Charter
Review. Of course. The BBC must be able to command the confidence of the
public.

But it is important to consider some other realities. Politicians will
always be tempted to seek to control the press, and governments have
powerful tools in relation to the BBC: the appointment of the board and
chairman, decisions on income and even the scope of BBC services.

Also, in a multichannel world, commercial broadcasters look with envy at
the BBC's audience share and lobby for the corporation to be constrained.
It is not surprising that many are demanding radical action - a change in
the system of governance and control by the new communications regulator,
Ofcom, of the BBC's standards, purposes and funding.

What effect would such changes have? The BBC has recently displayed three
particular weaknesses:

- It allowed a proper concern to entertain and maintain audience share to
distract it from its mission to inform and educate.

- It weakened journalistic disciplines, in a reaction against John Birt's
centralised controls.

- The governors were seen to defend management before they sought to hold
them to account.

But my experience in the BBC boardroom and as the regulator for
commercial television tells me that we cannot look to Ofcom to rectify
such weaknesses.

They require the governors to exert their proper roles of strategic
leadership and supervision. These are not the same as regulation and the
BBC has dug a damaging hole for itself in arguing that they are. Ofcom is
already the BBC's regulator, with effective powers over complaints,
statutory targets and competition compliance.

But organisations cannot be managed by regulators, as we see from the
railways and the Strategic Rail Authority.

Regulators are vital where their writ can run, and Ofcom's powers are
sufficient to have a real impact on how the BBC conducts itself. But
outside bodies are not as effective as a good board at driving management
in relation to strategy and day-to-day implementation. So current
governance arrangements may, like democracy, be fraught with
difficulties, until you consider the alternatives.

No group of people, however, excellent, will get every decision right.
When the governors make a mistake, they do so in the full glare of
publicity. So errors are rectified. And Gavyn Davies did the honourable
thing by handing the BBC the opportunity to do so.

In the mid-1980s, the BBC displayed far more systemic failings than
today, paying the price of some shoddy journalism with huge legal bills
and conflicts with government. The board fumbled those problems in their
early stages, but learnt from their mistakes and subsequently set the BBC
on a successful course for the best part of 15 years. The benefit to
Britain's culture and polity was enormous.

Real changes are needed again. But all parties must, in the public
interest, use the right tools to achieve them.

For the government, that means appointing without delay a new chairman,
free from any suspicion of cronyism, with the experience to know where
changes are needed and the authority to deliver them. For BBC management,
it means emphasising that rigorous journalism and high ethical standards
deliver not softer but more effective journalism. It means a new focus on
the BBC's responsibility to inform democracy with serious analysis and
attack the creative challenge of attracting audiences to such output.

For the governors, it means a root and branch re-examination of how they
deliver strategic leadership and effective supervision. And no one should
lose sight of the need to preserve the independence of the BBC. The
Hutton Report has concentrated minds inside and outside the Corporation.
It may be just what is needed to put the BBC back on track.

But the Kelly affair has a wider significance. Hutton's conclusions are a
triumph for government, though opinion polls suggest the public is less
convinced. Some may dismiss that as just one more example of the loss of
popular trust in politicians that has been gathering pace for a decade.

They would be wrong to do so. The loss of trust has reached crisis
proportions. And without trust, parliamentary democracy cannot function.
Annual surveys by British Social Attitudes show trust in governments of
any party to put national interests above party politics reached an all-
time low of 16 per cent in 2000, halving over 10 years. When voters
withdraw trust, states become ungovernable.

An effective package of reform to tackle these issues could be put
together from the recommendations of the recent Phillis Report on
communications and last year's report from the Committee on Standards in
Public Life on the machinery of government. It would be a disaster if
this opportunity for reform were lost and the outcome of Hutton was
simply the diversion of more than a fair share of blame to the BBC.