Today’s FT Creative Business runs a section on ‘talent pools’. It details that the boys at Ofcom learnt their trade under Lord Birt at the BBC’s Strategy Unit in the 1990s. With Lord Birt now an advisor to Number 10, you could say that this is a model of converged regulation.

BBC Strategy Unit…

“Until the early 1990s the BBC didn’t really need to think about its future. The world of media was much as it had been for 40 years and all the BBC had to do was keep on going.

By 1995, director-general John Birt could see that that world was changing fast. He set up the BBC strategy group within its Policy and Planning Unit led by Patricia Hodgson, to give the corporation a sense of direction. Charter renewal in the face of a hostile Tory government was its most pressing problem.

The group included those who have gone on to prominent places. Hodgson became head of the ITC, the former television regulator, Ed Richards, Dominic Morris and Robin Foster went on to Ofcom, while James Powell and Chris Bryant are now MPs.

The strength of the strategy group came from the fact that Birt understood the need to recruit the best people and listen to them. “He wanted to shake up the BBC, renew its charter and make it ready for the digital age,” says Foster. “It was an attractive job because he had high expectations of us. He kept us close so we had a real feeling of involvement and he housed us slightly away from the BBC, all in one place, which helped create a very strong esprit de corps.”"