| Tony Whitby | |
| Birth Name: | Anthony Charles Whitby |
| Birth Date: | 19 November 1929[1] |
| Birth Place: | Mere, Wiltshire, England |
| Death Date: | 25 February 1975 (aged 45) |
| Death Place: | Kensington, Greater London, England |
| Othername: | Tony Lesser |
| Alma Mater: | St Edmund Hall, Oxford |
| Spouse: | [2] |
| Education: | Bristol Cathedral School |
Anthony Charles Whitby (19 November 1929 - 25 February 1975)[3] [4] was a British BBC Radio producer and television current affairs editor who was Controller of BBC Radio 4 from 1970 to 1975.[5]
Whitby was born in Mere, Wiltshire and was educated at Bristol Cathedral School, where he won a scholarship to St Edmund Hall, Oxford.[5] There he wrote a thesis on Matthew Arnold.[6] [7]
Whitby began his career as a civil servant in the Civil Service from 1954 to 1959, working in the Colonial Office.[5] [8]
Whitby joined the BBC as a radio producer on At Home and Abroad in the 1950s.[8] In 1961, Whitby transferred to television as a studio director of Panorama, and later an editor on Gallery,[6] Tonight and 24 Hours. Whitby was Secretary of the BBC,[8] before his appointment as Controller of Radio 4 in 1969, taking up the post in January 1970.[6] In this post, he gained a reputation for shrewdly picking out the ideas of others and embellishing them by adding his own thoughts and suggestions. He had no intention of creating a new schedule from scratch, but he wanted a more topical and a more varied flavour - to make Radio 4, in his words, like a "well-labelled library that has a few surprises in it". So, in 1970, along came the unashamedly serious Analysis and the magisterial World Tonight, the bright and breezy 'commuter magazine' PM Reports and a phone-in called It's Your Line, the satirical sketch-show Week Ending, and the consumer magazine You and Yours.[9] In 1972, Whitby commissioned the first series of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue[10] and in 1973 Kaleidoscope.[7] In 2010, David Hendy, lecturer in broadcasting history at the University of Westminster, said:
"Looking back, what's most striking about Whitby's revolution of 1970 is how genuinely eclectic it made Radio 4, with programmes stretching across a suddenly wider spectrum, from the intellectually demanding or disturbing at one end to the faintly scurrilous or comforting at the other. The changes 40 years ago set Radio 4 on its long-term trajectory: away from the dusty tones of the somewhat middlebrow old Home Service, to the tougher, livelier, more authoritative, network we have today".[9]
Whitby also wrote several plays under the pseudonym Tony Lesser.[5]
His wife was Joy Whitby, known for her work in children's television.[11]
He died at age 45, after a long illness.[5]