Newly appointed director general of BBC, Lord Tony Hall, pledges to keep corporation a world class institution ITN

Royal Opera House chief executive Tony Hall has been appointed as director general of the BBC, just a week-and-a-half after the hapless George Entwistle resigned from the job – in a secret, emergency process aimed at restoring stability to the crisis hit broadcaster. Hall is due to take up his post in early March 2013 when acting director general Tim Davie steps down.

Lord Patten, writing to BBC staff on Thursday to announce the appointment, said that Hall – Lord Hall of Birkenhead, was "the right person to lead the BBC out of its current crisis and help rebuild public trust in the organisation" – after an extraordinary period in which thebroadcaster has been enveloped by criticism over the handling of the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal.

Hall, 61, was director of BBC news, and was a candidate for the top job in 1999 when Greg Dyke secured the position. He went off to run the Royal Opera House for 11 years, taking over an organisation that was itself in crisis. Under his tenure, the Opera House tried to shed off its elitist image, by hosting televised public performances outdoors in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere.

Patten said that Hall was "an insider and is currently an outsider. As an ex-BBC man he understands how the corporation's culture and behaviour make it, at its best, the greatest broadcaster in the world.

"And from his vantage point outside the BBC, he understands the criticisms