“Rumours abound that former Channel 4 chief creative officer Jay Hunt has joined US technology giant Apple,” Robert Shepherd reports for The Airwaves.
“It is unclear exactly what role Hunt will take up at Apple but it is understood she will be based at its London offices,” Shepherd reports. “A highly-rated exec, Hunt was responsbile for one the biggest coups in recent TV history – poaching The Great British Bake Off from the BBC.”
Shepherd reports, “She was also praised for overseeing a creative renaissance by having the confidence to ditch the long-running and popular Big Brother.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last month:
Better to get serious late than never! Fortunately, Apple has the resources to catch up on lost time pretty much instantly.
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I hope that before she goes, she persuades Channel 4 to finally get an app built for TV OS so that Channel 4’s streaming service will work on Apple TV.
At the moment, Channel4 still offers the advice that if you wish to view Channel 4 streams on an Apple TV, you need to do so via another Apple device, such as an iPad, iPhone or Mac and view it via AirPly.
They seem to be pretty mean on replay services generally
She is a terrible commissioner and an even worse people person. Yet again, Apple is hiring on perceived reputation rather than talent in its content business. For example, Beats1 is riddled with ex-BBC hangers-on who *achieved nothing* at the Corporation.
Her track record has been pretty good. She was widely tipped to become Channel 4’s chief executive but in June announced her resignation, without saying at that time where she was going. She has also been tipped to one day become the BBC’s first Director General ( similar to CEO ).
It’s not really worth listing the programmes she has championed first for the BBC and then for Channel 4 because most of them won’t mean anything to non-British readers, but she has commissioned some huge successes and also had the courage to controversially dump some established series like Big Brother or when in the BBC to dump well established presenters ( such as Adrian Chiles ) who were beyond their best-by date. She’s often credited with overseeing something of a creative renaissance in Channel 4 in the six years she was in that job and she was widely acclaimed for her work with BBC 1 before that.
I met her many times when she used to work in various roles at BBC news many years ago and found her quite likeable, but clearly highly motivated. She quickly rose through the system to become Controller of BBC1. She has always been ambitious and full of energy with lots of ideas, but has attracted more than her share of criticism from some British Newspapers.
Working with Apple could be an immense opportunity for her. It’s hard to know what sort of creative culture is being built within Apple, but there can be no dispute that a very promising team is being recruited.
I’ve often mentioned how Apple has a habit of quietly placing all it’s ducks in a row before anybody works out what they’re really up to and I think that Jay is another duck being carefully lined up in another row.
Correction, end of first paragraph … to one day become the BBC’s first female Director General.