Biographies

Controller, Knowledge Commissioning

George Entwistle became the BBC's Controller of Knowledge Commissioning in January 2008.

He is responsible for delivering the Knowledge strategy across the BBC on TV and on the web, from landmark series to documentaries and standalone web products; across specialisms from arts to history, natural history, business, science and religion; to consumer journalism and contemporary factual.

He heads BBC Vision's Knowledge and Learning commissioning teams who commission programmes and multiplatform content from Vision Productions and the independent sector, which together produce more than 1,600 hours of output a year.

George read Philosophy and Politics at Durham University.

He began his career as a sub-editor and magazine writer with Haymarket Magazines.

George joined the BBC in 1989 as a Broadcast Journalism trainee. He went on to become an assistant producer on Panorama, where he worked – among other things – on the programme's coverage of the first Gulf War, the fall of Margaret Thatcher, and an investigation into how the Tiananmen Square protest leaders were spirited out of China.

In January 1993, George became a producer for On The Record and subsequently went on to be a producer, assistant editor and deputy editor on BBC Two's current affairs flagship Newsnight.

He became Editor of Newsnight in 2001. During his editorship, the show won five RTS Awards: for Best News Programme, for Innovation with the Baghdad Blogger series, and twice winner in the Home News category; as well as picking up a Broadcast Award for Best News Programme.

George Entwistle's career has embraced a broad range of factual programme-making. In 1999, after 10 years in current affairs, he joined the science department as deputy editor of BBC One's popular science show Tomorrow's World.

In 2004 he left Newsnight for BBC Arts to become executive editor of Topical Arts on BBC Two and BBC Four. There he launched The Culture Show for BBC Two. He also spent several months as Chair of the Knowledge Building workgroup on Mark Thompson's Creative Future strategy review.

In late 2005, he was appointed Head and Commissioning Editor of TV Current Affairs and joined BBC Television's factual commissioning team.

With Peter Fincham, then Controller of BBC One, George engineered the return of Panorama to a weekday peak time slot. He also commissioned a wide variety of current affairs documentary series for BBC Two, including The Conspiracy Files, Michael Cockerell's series Blair: The Inside Story, Tropic Of Capricorn with Simon Reeve, the Falklands War drama-doc Sea Of Fire and Peter Taylor's four-part Age Of Terror.

In April 2007, he became Acting Controller of BBC Four and led a team which delivered one of the channel's most successful ever periods for audience share and reach.

BBC Four was named Channel of the Year 2008 in the Broadcast Digital Channel Awards. George Entwistle's commissions for BBC Four included the seasons of documentary programming around the drama hit Fanny Hill and the critically-acclaimed Mad Men; the channel's Archaeology and Emmylou Harris Nights; Darcey Bussell's Ten Best Ballet Moments; and forthcoming seasons and series on British motoring history; Beeching and the railways; and on children's illustration in Britain since World War Two.

George grew up in Yorkshire and his secondary education was at Silcoates School in Wakefield.