George Entwistle launches radical BBC shakeup New BBC director general George Entwistle used his first address to staff to announce the closure of the operations division and the departure of one of his rivals for the job, Caroline Thomson. Entwistle signalled a radical shakeup of the BBC structure put in place by his predecessor Mark Thompson, including the creation of BBC Vision, just six years ago. The operations group, overseen by Thomson, which was recently expanded to include the BBC's marketing and human resources departments, will be merged immediately with the finance unit into one division under chief financial officer Zarin Patel. Lucy Adams, the BBC's director of business operations and former director of BBC People, will return to the executive board which she left in 2010. Entwistle said: "Caroline Thomson and I have agreed the time is right for her to leave the organisation." Thomson, the BBC's chief operating officer who made the final shortlist for the job and would have been the first female director general, will leave the corporation at the end of next week. Patel will also leave the BBC but will oversee the newly combined division for the immediate future. Entwistle signalled the shakeup would go much further than the axing of the operations division, saying "in around two years' time, my aim is to have restructured the BBC - with fundamental implications for A&M [Audio and Music], Vision and Future Media." He added: "To be ready to create and curate genuinely digital content, we will need to integrate all three disciplines ... We need to be ready to produce and create genuinely digital content for the first time. Audio & Music, comprising all of the BBC's radio services, is headed by Tim Davie, with the BBC's Olympics supremo Roger Mosey in charge of BBC Vision in an acting capacity. Future Media, including BBC online and interactive, is currently overseen by Ralph Rivera. Entwistle, in his second day as director general, spoke to staff from studio eight, home of BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show, in the BBC's newly refurbished Broadcasting House in central London. "Though our best is often brilliant - in some of our output, we do settle for less than we should," Entwistle told staff. So I believe we owe our audiences a determined effort to raise the creative quality of what we do. Entwistle, who was talking to staff in the studio and live to all BBC premises via its internal video channel, said: "I want to make a promise - to listen to you and to work tirelessly on fixing the things that get in the way of high creative quality, making the BBC a place where you really can do your best, and deliver the best of British creativity to our audiences." The BBC's management board will be reduced from 25 to 12, he said, replacing the direction group which currently meets three times a month. Headed by the director general, it includes BBC News director Helen Boaden, Davie and Mosey. The direction group also includes the heads of the BBC in the nations as well as BBC North director Peter Salmon, creative director Alan Yentob, chief creative officer Pat Younge and director of communications Paul Mylrea. "With immediate effect, I'm reorganising the BBC to group all the operational and finance functions in one business division under the chief financial officer," said Entwistle. The new director general said cost savings had to be made not just by managers at the top of the organisation but by frontline film-makers. He said some of the savings made would be reinvested in better funded output. Entwistle said the management overhaul would enable the corporation to be run as "a more creative organisation, led and managed in a radically simplified way." "I intend to change the way we're led to put the emphasis where it belongs - on creative people doing creative things; on our audiences and the exceptional quality of work they deserve," he said. He added: "I want to make a promise - to listen to you and to work tirelessly on fixing the things that get in the way of high creative quality, making the BBC a place where you really can do your best, and deliver the best of British creativity to our audiences." He said no TV or radio services would be axed despite the ongoing cost-cutting. I will do nothing which puts at risk the radio services and TV channels our audiences love. Our wonderful TV channels and radio stations have a great deal of life left in them - they should be cherished and sustained. But he said it would be "increasingly difficult in the years ahead to remain successful in the UK without success overseas too." He said the BBC needed another Strictly Come Dancing, which has gone on to be a global hit. "BBC Worldwide needs to carry on growing but on the basis of successful public service content," he added. Entwistle said BBC's in-house production, the subject of much speculation about whether parts of it would be hived off and moved into the corporation's commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, was a "vital mechanism through which [we] guarantee editorial standards, protect specialism and create IP [intellectual property] with commercial potential." "The BBC would be unimaginable without it but like everyone we want it to up its game," he added. The new director general said he wanted to "get out and understand things ... I am here to put right the things that need to be fixed. "There's only one thing that will guarantee the future of the BBC - the continuing love and trust of our audiences," he added.