- Alasdair Milne worked at the BBC for 34 years and rose through the ranks to achieve the top job as Director-General.
He was educated at Winchester College and Oxford University. He joined the BBC as a general trainee and worked on the current affairs series Tonight (1957), the groundbreaking satire That Was the Week That Was (1962) and The Great War (1964). He later became Controller of BBC Scotland and in the 1970s he served as BBC Director of Programmes and Managing Director of BBC Television. During this period he banned the controversial Dennis Potter play Brimstone and Treacle (1976) and oversaw the acclaimed Shakespeare productions on BBC Two.
In 1982 he replaced Ian Trethowan as Director-General of the BBC. Milne's tenure lasted for five difficult years which saw the BBC under increasing pressure from Margaret Thatcher's government over programmes such as the Nationwide (1969) general election special with the prime minister in 1983, in which she was questioned by a member of the public over the sinking of the General Belgrano in the Falklands War, the libel action brought by Conservative MPs regarding the Panorama (1953) episode "Maggie's Militant Tendency", broadcast in 1984, the Real Lives interview with Martin McGuinness in 1985, the BBC's coverage of the United States' bombing of Libya and the Secret Society programme about the Zircon spy satellite. In January 1987, Milne was forced to resign by the BBC's Board of Governors, which brought an unhappy end to a long career at the BBC.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous
- SpouseSheila Graucob(1954 - 1992) (her death, 3 children)
- Children
- He was the Director-General of the BBC from 1982-1987. He was forced to resign in January of 1987 after a period of pressure from the Conservative government, who perceived a left-wing bias in the corporation's direction and programming content during his tenure.
- His son is Seumas Milne, former columnist and associate editor on The Guardian.
- He spoke Gaelic fluently and chaired the Gaelic Broadcasting Task Force, which produced a report in 2000 recommending the establishment of a Gaelic Broadcasting Authority to run a new digital Gaelic channel.
- As BBC director of programmes in the 1970s, he stopped the original transmission of Dennis Potter's controversial play Brimstone and Treacle (1976) and was also (according to producer Philip Hinchcliffe) behind the cancellation of the police series Target (1977), which had been criticised for being overly violent.
- [in 2004] It just seems to me that the television service has largely been run by women for the last four to five years and they don't seem to have done a great job of work. There was no innovation; constant makeovers and far too many cookery and gardening programmes. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I think the BBC has to pull its socks up quite considerably. I have nothing against women - I've worked with them all my life.
- The BBC has only one purpose in life and that is to make marvellous programmes.
- For about 25 years we did the best comedy, the best drama and the rest of it. I have been very critical of the recent dramatic output of BBC Television and comedy seems to be very thin. There are endless programmes about housing, gardens and cooking.
- [on Rome (2005)] I turned it off after 15 minutes because it's rubbish, historically inaccurate and done simply to titillate American taste.
- [on ShakespeaRe-Told (2005)] I think it's preposterous and perverse and foolish to reject the greatest dramatist that has ever lived and have him rewritten. Some clown was quoted as saying the other day he was making Shakespeare more accessible. He's been accessible, for Christ's sake, for 400 years and they don't need to do that.
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