This is taken from Ariel, w/c February 9 2009:

Katharine Everett was one of that  remarkable band of women who, by  dint of energy and sheer talent, transformed  the science features department  in the late 80s and early 90s and  proved once and for all that there was  no job in the BBC that a woman could  not do just as well as a man. By the  end of her career though, Katharine  had forged a reputation entirely of her  own: as a creative leader, as a force for  positive change at the BBC, above all as  a colleague and friend of total loyalty  and integrity.  

She launched a  new BBC television  channel.  She was one  of our leading  digital pioneers.  We respected  and admired  her for those  and other achievements. But we loved  her because of her honesty, her conviction  and the care and support she  gave to everyone she worked with.  

She began life at the BBC as a graduate trainee (like myself, she  was one of those notorious RATs)  and quickly made a creative mark in  science programmes, for instance on  the Bafta winning Oppenheimer and on  her Iceman Horizon. She moved into channel management and worked  with Michael Jackson on BBC One,  before being chosen to be the launch  head of programming for BBC  Choice – the first move in the BBC’s  digital tv strategy.  

From then on, the BBC threw her one challenge after another: interactive  tv, the web, Making it Happen  and then the leadership of the  change programme across the whole  organisation.

When I became dg, I tried to interview her for that job and quickly discovered that she was interviewing me. I passed the test – though only just – and Katharine  and I forged a working relationship  which has been one of the strongest  and most searching I have ever  experienced. She always told it like it was, she was ruthless about exposing anything she thought smelled even faintly like bullshit, but what a person to have working alongside  you, especially when the going got  tough – as it occasionally does at the  BBC!

Katharine’s biggest criticism of the BBC that she and the rest of us had inherited was the erratic and inconsistent way it offered development  opportunities and support to  its people. Her last BBC passion was for the coaching programme and the last promise she insisted I give her  was that the programme would continue.  It will, and her contribution to it will be part of her lasting legacy to us.  

Katharine dealt with her illness  with her customary grace, courage  and common sense, but it has been a  heartbreaking time for everyone who  knew and loved her at the BBC – and, of course, so much more so for  Horacio, Katharine’s children and all her family and friends. We’ll be thinking about them in the weeks  to come, as well as honouring and  cherishing the achievement and the  memory of the Katharine we knew.  

Mark Thompson

This is taken from The Times, February 17, 2009:

Katharine Everett: award-winning BBC science producer

Katharine Everett was a pioneering executive in British broadcasting and new media. She shaped many of the BBC’s modern services — including digital television channels, interactive red-button services and the development of the BBC on the internet — in a varied career as a science producer and leader of organisational change.

Her production credits include Oppenheimer (for which she won a Bafta), Tomorrow’s World and medical shows, such as Your Life in Their Hands and Hospital Watch (a week of outside live broadcasts on BBC One from a large teaching hospital where anything could and did happen). She joined Jana Bennett’s team on Horizon and produced one of the most watched Horizons of the time, on the mysterious Iceman found mummified in the Alps, winning a race against the world’s media, who were chasing this unique find.

Katharine Winn Everett was born in 1952, the eldest daughter of Commander Peter Everett, and Penelope Everett (née Stapleton). Her grandfather, Sir Percy Everett, was the first deputy Chief Scout to Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scout Movement.

She was educated at Wycombe Abbey and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She joined the BBC in 1975. In her 30-year career she demonstrated a capacity for hard work and seizing new opportunities. After stints in the BBC’s wardrobe department, drawing on her experience of student theatre while at Oxford, and as a telephone inquiry clerk, she joined the new research assistant producer scheme. This led her to the science and features department where she became a distinguished science producer and one of a new generation of talented women who finally broken through to become producers and executives.

To the surprise of her producer colleagues, she then took up the new role of head of forward planning for BBC One. In this new role she modernised the way broadcasting was funded and budgeted, and introduced discipline in the planning process — sometimes against the inclinations of the rather more free-spirited channel controllers.

In 1998 she became a channel controller herself, launching BBC Choice, the corporation’s first digital channel for younger viewers, and a forerunner of BBC Three. As its controller, she pioneered the BBC’s development of interactive television, navigation and digital text services including What’s On. Her big breakthrough came in 2000 with the Bafta-winning interactive Wimbledon service that let viewers select which courts and matches to watch in full, since acknowledged as one of the precursors to Video on Demand.

In 2001-03 she was the BBC’s first controller of new media, and brought confidence to this young pathfinding division at a time when the positive impact of emerging technologies was not widely appreciated by the BBC or Britain as a whole. Many of those whom she recruited to her team are now influential exponents of creative new media, going on to develop the iPlayer, red button services and public service content on the internet.

In 2004 Everett took on the role of project director of the Director- General Greg Dyke’s change programme, Making It Happen. The scheme involved 10,000 members of staff taking part in sessions to improve the BBC’s output and the quality of working life in the corporation. Her work helped the organisation to embrace radical change faced by the broadcasting industry, preparing it for the convergence of new and old media, and radical cost pressures from the licence fee settlement.

Much of the way the BBC works today was shaped by Everett’s forward thinking and her knowledge of the organisation. Her experience of working in many new areas of broadcasting equipped her well. She understood why organisational change is not a threat but a necessity, and asserted that organisations can cope with continuous change effectively when carried out by the staff, not imposed by top management. Her most recent role was as a BBC executive coach. She also served as a director of Relate, the relationship counselling charity.

Outside her work, Everett had a keen interest in music and choral singing, raising money for charity even while she underwent gruelling medical treatment for a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer.

She is survived by her husband, Horacio Queiro, a son and a daughter.

Katharine Everett, television executive, was born on July 3, 1952. She died of cancer on February 3, 2009, aged 56