Is Matt Brittin the man to save the BBC?

There are three “all-time difficult gigs”, said Jonathan Maitland in The Spectator: prime minister, England football manager, and director-general of the BBC – a job that may just be “The Most Impossible In The World”. And unlike the other two, there are no “potential big wins”, only “potential catastrophes”.

Now we know the next person to be handed the poisoned chalice: Matt Brittin. The former president of Google in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as a former Great Britain rowing bronze medallist...