Moving from Auntie Beeb to the Gray Lady may have a pleasing ring. But that Mark Thompson can swap the director general's chair of the BBC for a Manhattan chief executive's office also marks a significant, generational shift: it is the moment when global and technological convergence has reached the point where it is possible for the leader of Britain's public-service broadcaster to land a $5m-a-year job as boss of the company behind the New York Times, the most famous newspaper in the US.
The appointment also represents a substantial personal endorsement of the 55-year-old Briton and his stewardship of the BBC. While enjoying the benefits of guaranteed licence-fee funding to the tune of £3.6bn a year, he has nevertheless proven able to develop the corporation digitally (selling Doctor Who episodes via iTunes overseas), maintain quality on screen despite lapses over phone-ins and taste, and navigate constant political pressure led by the Murdoch press.
Not since Sir William Haley left the BBC in 1952 to become editor of the Times has a DG quit for a job in newspapers – and none has gone to America. The early days of broadcasting might have seen senior executives moving between the two, but as television developed, the fissure between print and broadcast widened – until the internet turned everything on its head.
Today, the lines of competition have blurred. The BBC's generously funded website competes with a press trying to embrace multimedia – and the cash available at the BBC has helped give its executives a digital background that newspapers can only eye with jealousy.
It was once felt that the BBC was closer to publicly funded arts organisations than red-blooded commercial media: a decade ago, Tony Hall left BBC News to run the Royal Opera House. Now, though, life after the BBC looks very different. Last year, another former senior BBC manager, Ashley Highfield, who led the development of the iPlayer, which had transformed the viewing habits of a nation, became the chief executive of Johnston Press, the newspaper group that owns the Scotsman and the Yorkshire Post.
When Thompson arrived at the top of the BBC eight years ago, it was at a high-profile national organisation in some peril, with both its chairman and his predecessor, Greg Dyke, having resigned. The New York Times occupies a similar position in the US imagination, and faces financial pressures that have forced it to sell regional newspapers and stakes in sport clubs, including Liverpool FC, to concentrate on a handful of brands – the New York Times itself, the Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune.
Thompson's final interview was in early July, to give him plenty of time to concentrate on the Olympics. At the heart of his pitch for the job was to emphasise the importance of video journalism, and of taking a professional approach to its production. Print, he believes, will still be the New York Times's principal means of transmitting information, but with 509,000 online subscribers to serve, a newspaper now needs to tell stories using cameras and the techniques of a John Simpson or Jeremy Paxman. In time, perhaps, the newspaper may create its own TV channel – transmitted, perhaps, via YouTube rather than over cable or satellite.
It was part of what Arthur Sulzberger, the chairman and controlling shareholder in the New York Times Company, wanted to hear. The New York Times also wants to extend its brand overseas – the paper has just launched a digital edition in Mandarin, following an online version aimed at India the year before – and having a non-American in charge is one way to ensure that the paper develops from its roots as a big city newspaper into a news brand with a global reach and audience to match. Although recently overtaken by the celebrity-heavy Daily Mail as the world's leading online newspaper, the New York Times remains, by some distance, the most-read upmarket title.
Journalists on the ground say they couldn't care less that Thompson is not from their side of the Atlantic. David Carr, a media columnist at the New York Times, says: "The days of provincialism around geography, or platform for that matter, are long past. The NYT is in the global information business, this guy has shown an ability to build and manage news enterprises at that scale, so his background seems relevant to the task at hand" – even if, he adds, the new leader pronounces the word "schedule" differently.
Those close to the selection process in New York say that there was no single factor that swung the decision in Thompson's favour. The critics were quick to point out that the BBC man has not had any experience running a profit-making company, apart perhaps from a short stint running state-owned, advertiser-funded Channel 4 in the early part of the last decade. But Thompson's allies point to the rapid growth of BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm that exploits BBC brands for profit, and in particular its digital revenues, which amounted to £139m last year.
Digital, for BBC Worldwide, also sees content being streamed into the US, meaning that BBC content is becoming gradually more visible in that country too. BBC Worldwide also distributed E4's Misfits, which became a surprise hit on Hulu, a US internet television service, last year. For his part, Thompson believes that his most important challenge at the New York Times will be to replace declining print advertising revenues with digital income, at a time when the number of web subscriptions and page views demonstrate the audience for journalism is, if anything, growing.
The outgoing BBC boss, meanwhile, believes that the corporation's coverage of the Olympics, through 24 dedicated digital channels and bespoke apps to stream Games video to tablets and mobiles, represents the apotheosis of his achievement at the corporation. Opinion polls even suggest that public approval of the BBC rose as a result of the Games – by a higher proportion than the Queen, Boris Johnson or even the city of London itself – and while Thompson acknowledges that he cannot easily take credit for any specific aspect of the Olympics broadcasts, he was a keen enthusiast of ensuring that every moment of sporting action was covered live.
That meant the BBC striking a commercial deal with its traditional rival Sky, a deal in which the Murdoch-influenced satellite broadcaster ended up promoting the corporation's Olympic content on and off air.
But Thompson was being wooed well before the Olympics. His first contact with Sulzberger was in January, just as it emerged he was planning to leave the BBC later in the year later in the year. His relationship with the 60-year-old chairman will be critical, not least because, as publisher of the New York Times, Sulzberger has a hand in editorial appointments that Thompson himself will be denied. But with the Briton no stranger to navigating complex internal governance, he is hopeful that he can strike up a relationship that will allow him to have an impact. As a start, Thompson has already met with other key members of the Sulzberger family, before his final interview with the company's board took place in the early part of last month.
The decision, though, did not come through until the middle of the Games, perhaps as the first British athletics gold medals came through – although final negotiations over pay ensured that his appointment was kept quiet long enough for the closing ceremony to conclude and the Briton to fly over to New York on Tuesday. The distance between London and New York, just as between television and newspapers, public and private media, has never felt closer.
Media stars who shine brightly across the Atlantic
Lucian Grainge, chief executive,
Universal Music Group
Once described as the "killer shark" because of his competitive instincts, Grainge runs the world's biggest music company from Los Angeles rather than the company's traditional HQ in New York. Chief executive Doug Morris, who now runs rival Sony Music, was eased out by Universal's owner to clear the way for Grainge, an Arsenal fan, in 2011. Grainge, 52, is now embroiled in a battle to complete the £1.2bn takeover of EMI Music and is locked in negotiations with European and US regulators.
Anna Wintour, editor in chief, Vogue
The eldest daughter of Charles Wintour, a former editor of the London Evening Standard, Wintour has edited Vogue for 24 years and is the most influential – and best known – name in fashion journalism. The demanding personality of the so-called "ice queen", now 62, was fictionalised in The Devil Wears Prada, but her energetic fundraising efforts for Barack Obama have led to reports that she could be named US ambassador to London if the president is re-elected.
Tina Brown, editor in chief, the Daily Beast and Newsweek
Journalist Brown moved to New York with husband Harold Evans after he left the Times. She edited a succession of magazines, starting with Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, before founding the short-lived Talk. Brown, 58, now a US citizen, launched her first digital venture, the Daily Beast, in 2008, before staging a partial return to print when the Beast merged with Newsweek two years later.
Sir Howard Stringer, chairman of Sony
Welsh-born Stringer moved to the US after university and served in Vietnam. Thirty years at CBS saw him rise to the top before he switched to run Sony's US interests – its film studio and music company – in 1997 and earned the title of the most influential Briton in Hollywood. Stringer, 70, was chief executive of Sony between 2005 and 2012 and remains chairman. He is a friend of Mark Thompson and recently joined the board of broadband company Talk Talk.
• This article was amended on 16 August 2012 to clarify that Misfits, although distributed in the US by BBC Worldwide, was shown in the UK on E4.
