Five woman named as BBC1 controller

One of the most powerful jobs at the BBC – controller of BBC1 – which has been vacant because of the 'Queen and Annie Leibovitz' debacle, has at last been filled. But Jay Hunt, the woman who's been given the role, will now be regretting her short tenure as director of programmes at rival Five where she defected in May after years at the Beeb. During her time at Five, she has done everything she can to spoil BBC1's chances in the ratings. She poached the popular BBC newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky to be the face of Five News and managed to wrest the long-running soap Neighbours from the BBC in a £300m bidding war. Now she has her work cut out to right the damage done at BBC1.
 
Hunt replaces Peter Fincham, who resigned in October over the affair of the Leibovitz photoshoot trailer, which was controversially edited to make it look as though the Queen had walked out in a huff when she hadn't.  Several prominent candidates ruled themselves out of the BBC1 post, including Jane Tranter, the head of the BBC's drama department, and Jay Hunt herself. In the end, she decided she could not turn down "the best job in television".

She said yesterday: "Ultimately, I could not resist the opportunity to take on such a creatively exciting role." Furious Five insiders see it differently. They say Hunt was put under "intolerable" pressure from desperate BBC executives who used "every trick in the book" - getting both executives and screen stars to repeatedly call her - to woo her back to the BBC.

Hunt, 40, now has a £1.1bn budget to play with at Britain's most-watched channel. But she must also implement 10 per cent budget cuts and commission fewer programmes, while meeting the BBC governors' call for more "innovation and creative ambition".  During her 18-year career at the BBC, she held senior jobs on Panorama and in news. But she is said to lack experience in comedy and high-end drama, regarded as vital to BBC1's success. Her biggest challenge is to find a replacement for Neighbours. ·