This is taken from The Guardian:

The Guardian profile: Mark Thompson

The director general of the BBC faces a staff backlash against his plans to axe about 4,000 of them. But those who know him say he is unlikely to waver from his belief that the cuts are vital for the future of the corporation
Owen Gibson, Media correspondent
Friday May 20, 2005

As the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, is driven through the picket lines surrounding the corporation's gleaming Media Centre in west London on Monday, his mind may wander back to the last time that massed ranks of BBC staff brought traffic to a standstill.

Then, it was an emotional show of spontaneous support for the outgoing director general, Greg Dyke, brought down by the fallout from the Hutton report. On Monday, the atmosphere will be very different as their anger is targeted at Thompson, the man who replaced Dyke and is attempting to push through the biggest job cuts in the corporation's history.

There is a feeling of bewilderment, fury and rebellion in the air. Even some senior managers, while reluctant to go public with their concerns, are furious at the manner in which the cuts have been pushed through.

The biggest complaint is that the decision has not been fully thought through in terms of its cost to morale and the effect on programme making. And on the newsroom floor, the equation of cutting budgets now to reinvest up to £355m a year in programmes later is failing to convince.

Articulating the concerns earlier this year, the Newsnight anchor Jeremy Paxman, who will stay at home on Monday, said: "I don't understand why it's necessary, particularly at a time when you can spend hundreds of millions building new buildings, moving staff to Manchester and all the rest of it."

Yet everything about the background and character of Thompson, who is facing the prospect of strike action involving up to 10,000 staff over plans to cut about 4,000 and slash budgets by 15%, suggests he is unlikely to waver.

According to those who know him well, there is a side to him that revels in making difficult decisions. He is variously described as "resolute" and "quite self-flagellating", and many point to his Jesuit education as a defining characteristic.

He is far from dictatorial in his management style and those who have worked with him say he is consensual and approachable, yet invariably ends up getting his own way. With his eyes focused on charter renewal he has decided that the "creative prize" is worth the short-term pain.

A BBC lifer, bar a politically astute two years outside the corporation running Channel 4, he knows the corporation inside out and values it dearly after spells as editor of Panorama and the Nine O'Clock News, controller of BBC2 and director of television. But Thompson will surely look back on the last year as one of the most difficult of his career.

Hitting the ground running after the BBC lost a year defending itself over the Kelly affair, he spent his gardening leave at home in Oxford furiously rewriting its charter renewal pitch, becoming convinced that wholesale cuts were required.

His argument is that unless the BBC slims down, the government will forcibly put it on a crash diet. Pointing to the recent encouraging green paper, he insists that the cuts are vital if the corporation is to release more money for content and finance the switch to the world of digital transmission, broadband and mobile phones.

Not only have his plans to slim down the BBC caused anger and bitterness among staff, but they are also feeling bruised by the characteristically swift and uncompromising nature with which he has carried them out.

Having been routinely described throughout his career as "liked and respected rather than loved", he has seen those feelings harden. This impression was recently backed up when the annual staff survey showed that a third fewer people thought that senior management was listening to them compared with the previous year.

"It seems to me that he's the new director general and he wants to push through his changes," said Luke Crawley, the head BBC official for the broadcasting union Bectu, who has been leading negotiations with management. "He's quite determined to carry it through. They have steadfastly refused to negotiate and prefer instead to talk about consultation on how the cuts will be managed. Our members are outraged at the way it's been done and its implications for the future of the BBC.

"At the moment it's hard to see past his actions to see the man. The cuts are so deep and so savage that they're obscuring everything else. I think they're underestimating the depth of feeling."

Yet many outside observers believe that the director general's course of action is the right one and only appears so dramatic because overheads and staffing levels continued to creep up under Dyke.

Although they worked well together when colleagues at the BBC, Thompson has since been keen to differentiate himself from Dyke's brand of populism, frequently hinting that costs were allowed to rise too far. But his predecessor does not feel that the cuts have been properly thought through.

"All I've ever said is that it's not for me to decide what my successor should do. But I would not have made that number of people redundant in that way. I think it's too damaging to the morale of an organisation. But different managers and leaders have different styles," said Dyke.

Brought up in Hertfordshire and educated at Stonyhurst, Thompson then progressed smoothly to Merton College, Oxford, where he picked up a first in English and edited Isis. Then it was on to the BBC, joining as a trainee in 1979. He was made editor of the Nine O'Clock News at the age of just 30.

His big break came at the Cambridge broadcasting convention in 1997, when the scheduled BBC speaker, Alan Yentob, broke his tooth and Thompson stood in at the last minute, impressing senior colleagues by delivering an impressively off-the-cuff homily on what the BBC meant to him, likening its programmes to "home cooked food". The metaphor was apt - Thompson is a keen cook and enjoys entertaining a small coterie of friends from outside the world of television at home in Oxford at weekends.

His background might suggest the classic white, middle-class, clipped Oxbridge BBC graduate. But those who know him well say he is in truth a more complex character. He gives the impression of being a deep thinker but is impulsive. He is good company socially, yet there remains the suspicion that he is forever holding something back. He did not help his reputation for obfuscation by insisting that he was not interested in returning to the BBC while at Channel 4, before accepting the job a few weeks later.

There is a sense among staff, too, that they are unsure what to make of their director general. While consensual in style - he was the only senior BBC executive to thrive under the contrasting regimes of Birt and Dyke - and happy to canvas opinion widely before making a decision, once made he sticks to it.

He shuns London clubs and restaurants for a quiet family life at his expansive home in Oxford with his American wife, Jane, and their three children. Nor is he a man for sharp suits or expensive cars, retaining the stubble he cultivated at Channel 4 and a down-at-heel style that could be described as more M&S than Savile Row.

A devotee of books and brisk country walks, he also remains committed to his faith. His church, St Aloysius Gonzaga, still recites Mass in Latin and eschews any concessions to evangelism.

Critics point out that he has never remained in a job for more than two or three years - long enough to create an impression by making dynamic changes and putting new strategies in place, but long gone by the time they took effect. Look back through his record, they say, and many of his initiatives lauded as bold strategic moves at the time have turned out to be blind alleys.

Shortly after announcing the extensive cuts, Thompson said in a speech that "leading the BBC at this moment does feel a little bit like skateboarding down a flight of stairs holding a Ming vase". If he should stumble, this time he will have to pick up the pieces himself.

Mark Thompson facts:

Born July 31 1957

Married 1987; two sons, one daughter

Education Stonyhurst College; Merton College, Oxford

Career BBC: research assistant trainee 1979; researcher, Everyman and Nationwide 1979-80; assistant producer, Nationwide 1980-82; producer, Breakfast Time 1982-84; output editor, London Plus 1984-85; output editor, Newsnight 1985-87; editor, Nine O'Clock News 1988-90; editor, Panorama 1990-92; head of features department 1992-94; head of factual programmes 1994-96; controller, BBC2 1996-98; director, national and regional broadcasting, 1998-2000; director of television 2000-02. Channel 4: chief executive, 2002-04.
BBC director general, 2004-

Thompson on the BBC "The BBC is the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world. It's a unique treasure"

On programmes from his childhood Z Cars, BBC1: "It's what I remember most of all. My dad came from Preston"