Lord Burns, confirmed on Thursday as the new chairman of Channel 4, immediately received a welter of advice on whom to appoint as its chief executive from senior industry figures.
Andy Duncan, the current chief executive, is standing down next
month. Lord Burns, although he will not succeed Luke Johnson as chairman until late January, is to join the board immediately as chairman-designate, charged with finding a new leader.
There were signs that the former Treasury permanent secretary of the Treasury and chairman of Abbey National will be seen by those inside C4's headquarters in London as what one called "an establishment choice".
A senior C4 insider said: "Channel 4 is something precious and different. To be buried by the predictable and the safe is wrong. The tendency then would be to push for a more predictable and safe chief executive. Legacy media organisations can't afford to do that.
"It's dangerous out there. You have to take some risks. Nothing against Lord Burns personally, but it's symbolically bad."
Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, which was responsible for the appointment of the C4 chairman, is said by two people familiar with the process to want a person with digital knowledge as chief executive. There is a preference against choosing "yet another white middle-class, middle-aged male".
Such an approach might dent the chances of Peter Fincham, director of television at ITV (LSE: ITV.L - news) , and Kevin Lygo, C4's director of programming, who have been named as favourites, and boost potential candidates such as Lorraine Heggessey, the chief executive of the independent producer TalkbackThames, or Fru Hazlitt, a former sales director of Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO - news) in Europe and chief executive of the radio broadcaster GCap.
David Scott, a former C4 chief executive now in charge of the Digital UK organisation that is switching broadcasting signals from analogue to digital, said: "What you need is just the best person and look at the task ahead. That is for C4 to define its public purpose and continue to sharpen them, something that Andy Duncan has already done. It needs a good strategist who will continue the work of developing the digital channels [E4, More 4, FilmFour] and the online business."
Some people believe there is a danger of overcomplicating C4's future role. "It is all about sticking to making great television that people want to advertise around and to have a way of exploiting that online," Peter Bazalgette, a former C4 board member, said.
Lord Burns said in a statement: "This is a time of great change as we experience the impact of the rapid development of digital technology and C4 has a very special role to play."
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