“Can you imagine an American broadcasting company asking an Englishman to take charge?”, the broadcaster Ed Murrow asked on declining Winston Churchill’s wartime offer to become deputy director-general of the BBC.
Murrow’s predictive powers turned out to be less than sharp on this one. Mark Thompson, the former New York Times and ex-BBC chief, has been named the new chief executive and chairman of cable news giant CNN. At the New York Times, Thompson headed the digital transition that out-stripped rivals in subscriptions and pivots to new formats.
