LONDON — The British Broadcasting Corporation sought to overcome its worst crisis in years on Thursday by appointing a former BBC news executive who went on to head the Royal Opera House as its new director general, urging him to rebuild public trust shredded by a scandal over botched reporting of sexual abuse.
The appointee, Tony Hall, 61, will replace George Entwistle who resigned earlier this month and became the most prominent casualty of the affair.
When Lord Hall takes over in March, the BBC said, his principal task will be to restore faith and confidence in the integrity of an organization that is not only a national institution and Britain’s public broadcaster, but also a sprawling bureaucracy financed by a compulsory license fee levied on most television-set owners.
Chris Patten, head of the supervisory BBC Trust which made the appointment, said Lord Hall, a former head of news at the BBC during a 28-year career before he joined the opera 11 years ago, was “the right person to lead the BBC out of its current crisis.”
His experience in journalism would be “invaluable as the BBC looks to rebuild its reputation,” Lord Patten said. According to British news report, Lord Hall was the only candidate the BBC Trust approached about the job.
The appointment won enthusiastic approval from a wide spectrum of politicians, media commentators and current and former BBC staff members. Many noted that Lord Hall had a record of innovation that included overseeing the launch of the BBC Web site, the broadcaster’s 24-hour news channel, and Radio 5 Live, a widely popular, news-and-sport radio channel.
They pointed, too, to his record for turning around the fortunes of another prized British institution, the Royal Opera House, where he assumed control at a time of artistic and financial disarray and succeeded in stabilizing — as well as popularizing — what has long been seen as one of the world’s top opera houses.
Steve Hewlett, a former editor of “Panorama,” one of the BBC’s leading investigative programs, said Lord Hall had a reputation among BBC program-makers as “straightforward, honest, a man with no side to him” and “no pushover” in handling contentious issues.
“I think he brings to the BBC what is desperately needed, weight,” he said.
Ben Bradshaw, a former culture minister who was previously a BBC reporter, described Lord Hall as “a very good, calm operator,” “a good motivator” and decisive in stressful situations. “He’s a very safe pair of hands, and very decent, fair-minded individual,” Mr. Bradshaw said.
Lord Hall’s predecessor, Mr. Entwistle, resigned on Nov. 10 after disclosures that a flagship BBC current affairs program, “Newsnight,” had wrongly implicated a former Conservative politician in accusations of sexual abuse at a children’s home in North Wales in the 1970s and 1980s.
The error compounded earlier disclosures that the same program had canceled an investigation a year ago into accusations of sexual abuse of minors by the television host Jimmy Savile at a time when other departments at the corporation were planning Christmas tributes to Mr. Savile, who died in October 2011 at age 84.
Mr. Entwistle had been in office at the BBC for less than two months when he quit. He took over from Mark Thompson who became president and chief executive of The New York Times Company on Nov. 12.
In a statement to the BBC staff, Lord Patten said: “The past eight weeks have been very traumatic for the BBC.”
He added: “The key challenge will be re-establishing our reputation with the public.”
The scandals at “Newsnight” pushed the BBC to begin a series of internal inquiries about its culture and practices in the decades of suspected abuse by Mr. Savile and into its specific reasons for canceling the investigation into Mr. Savile last year.
Lord Patten said: “While there are still very serious questions to be answered by the ongoing inquiries, it is in the interests of license fee-payers that the BBC now starts to refocus on its main purpose — making great programs that audiences love and trust.”
Scandal-Scarred BBC Names Opera Chief as Leader
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Scandal-Scarred BBC Names Opera Chief as Leader
