BBC makes Peter Salmon first director of the north
Peter Salmon has been appointed director of BBC North and will oversee the corporation's new base at Salford Quays.
Salmon, currently chief creative officer of the corporation's broadcasting and production division BBC Vision, will take up his new position in mid-2009 and join the BBC's executive board in 2010 when the Salford Quays development nears completion.
He will be based at the Salford Quays site, which will house 2,500 staff with about 1,500 jobs moving north from London.
In his new role Salmon will be directly responsible for BBC Sport, and all its activities; the radio networks BBC Radio 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra; and BBC Children's, including programme-making, commissioning and broadcasting of its CBBC and CBeebies channels.
Salmon previously worked in Manchester during the mid-1990s as director of programmes at Granada TV.
His appointment was announced by BBC director-general, Mark Thompson, who described the Salford Quays development as "a huge step along the path to realising the BBC's ambition to produce half of its output outside of London by 2016."
Thompson said: "Peter has a long and continuing connection with the north of England and is well known for his work at Granada.
"He rightly commands huge respect across the BBC and the wider media industry and I am very pleased he has decided to accept this exciting new role."
Following the announcement Salmon spoke of his ambition to build "a world-class, creative powerhouse for the BBC based in the north of England but networked into the whole UK".
He said: "This is the first big broadcasting venture of a new decade and can define the way the BBC works for a generation.
"I think this significant cluster of programme-making and broadcasting can be a magnet for other like-minded organisations too, from independent producers to facilities and technology companies, educational bodies to training groups for established and new media.
"Though I will be sad to move on next year from leading the BBC's in-house teams at Vision Productions – the biggest and best group of content-makers in the world – I am really happy that I will still be working with many of them in Salford Quays."
Salmon started his career at the BBC as a general trainee in 1981 before rising to become BBC Bristol's head of factual.
He left the BBC in the early 1990s to join Channel 4 as controller of factual programmes before moving to Granada. He returned to the BBC as controller of BBC One in 1997 before becoming director of sport at the corporation from 2000 to 2005.
He left the BBC in 2005 to become chief executive at The Television Corporation but left after a takeover in summer 2006 and took up his current role at BBC Vision in October 2006.