We continually look to develop our offering and our prices," she says.Although O'Brien is adamant that BA short-haul fares now stand comparison with the no-frills carriers, she insists: "We don't just want to be about price. The airline is running its first television ad campaign aimed at businesswomen, launched on Friday. O'Brien has also introduced Kylie Minogue as a face of the airline, booked ads on Capital Radio to attract younger flyers and usedBlue Peter (which staged a competition to "paint" an airliner) to market BA to families."Historically we have had a much stronger association with the business market," she says. The fact that she sits on top of an annual budget of around £60m - making her one of the most powerful marketing executives in Britain - probably helps her to sleep a little easier as well.Things are changing at BA. Not only does BA have to compete with the big long-haul carriers, but no-frill' airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet are nipping at its heels in its own backyard. If O'Brien doesn't look as if she suffers from insomnia, there's a good explanation: it was her idea to introduce flat beds to international air travel.
It needs to take complaints of, say, "institutional leftism" as an opportunity for serious self-questioning.Thompson has under way a wide-ranging review of service and programme strategy and has run up the flag of excellence, value to the public and big projects (at least that's what I take "high-profile cultural interventions" to mean.)"We shall be waiting for the results and hoping that he has taken to heart the words of one of his favourite authors, Matthew Arnold, whose words on culture could equally well describe an ambition for the BBC: "The acquainting of ourselves of the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.". A speedy transfer from BBC4 to BBC2 will confirm robust intentions.It is equally important that the corporation does not confuse independence with "seeing off" critics. On the former Thompson and Byford led a post-Hutton BBC to a creditable performance through the election campaign.The interviews with party leaders may be becoming a bit of a turn but it was plain that no one had removed the horseshoes from interviewers' boxing gloves. What is more, there have been fewer more devastating critiques of governmental style than the current comedy The Thick of It. It will help him to get things done.The rest of us viewers, listeners and new media users will be most interested in the output, its independence and its quality. He has forged a strong relationship with Mark Byford, the disappointed former acting director-general, whom Thompson has put in charge of all the BBC's journalism and whom he uses as a trusted sounding board. By slimming down the unmanageably large executive board he inherited, Thompson inevitably bruised feelings.I suspect that governors and his senior colleagues will be looking for an increasingly collegiate management style now that he has imposed his authority on the organisation and set a course.
They will change further if the Green Paper proposals for even more separation of the executive and the new trustees are carried through in the new charter.So far Thompson has managed the new relationship well. He is less powerful than his predecessors but appears to value, even relish, the better informed and more rigorous questioning and review of his plans.He was Grade's man; they came in more or less together and get on. But the new structure has not yet been tested in a crisis.When it is, Thompson, who is formidable in argument and decides quickly and firmly, will need to read the politics with care.He will also need the support of his team. It is also practical, for it is hard to push through ambitious savings plans, and by raising the profile the big bang approach makes success more likely There is also the time factor. The BBC wants to stick with agreements and work through the recognised unions, probably a two-year process, so Thompson had to get on with it.He now has a long haul in front of him and his team to make sure that the savings are real and that both staff and the wider world can see the benefit of the reinvestment when it comes. Governors, government and critics will be watching.The relationship between the director-general and the governors has changed following Michael Grade's reforms of BBC governance. What feels like a handbrake turn is in reality simply a necessary correction.
