{"id":455442,"date":"2026-03-03T14:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T14:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/455442\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T14:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T14:20:07","slug":"bbc-coo-leigh-tavaziva-to-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/455442\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC COO Leigh Tavaziva To Exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Leigh Tavaziva, the BBC<\/a>\u2018s chief operating officer, is stepping down amid continued leadership upheaval at the UK national broadcaster.<\/p>\n

\n\tPer an internal email, Tavaziva has told employees that she will exit the BBC in September. She has worked at the corporation for the past five years, earning nearly \u00a3470,000 ($624,000).<\/p>\n

\n\tTavaziva is the third BBC board-level executive to quit in the past four months, following director-general Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness\u2019 resignations last November over a bodged Donald Trump edit.<\/p>\n

\n\tTavaziva said: \u201cAfter five brilliant years, I have taken the opportunity to reflect on my own role at the BBC and have decided that the time is right for me to leave to pursue new opportunities. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI will be stepping down in September. It is a privilege and honour to work here and to have played my part, alongside you all, to ensure we deliver on the mission and purpose of an organisation that matters so much, and now more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe continued: \u201cI will be working closely with Rhodri Talfan Davies, as he takes over as interim director-general next month, to ensure we carefully manage this period of transition and support the new director-general when they begin. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI do recognise the uncertainty many of you are facing with the changes we are announcing today \u2013 we will continue to keep you updated as our plans and proposals develop and to ensure that you have an opportunity to feedback and input into the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTavaziva added that Storm Fagan, chief product officer, has been appointed to the newly-created role of BBC chief technology and product officer, to lead a new unit, named BBC Media Tech.<\/p>\n

\n\tDeadline revealed the plans for BBC Media Tech last year<\/a>, and Tavaziva said it would \u201cunite all our product and technology teams in public service with tech and product colleagues from BBC Studios into a single group team.\u201d Sources said it could eventually be spun-off into an commercial division, housing the digital teams that power services including iPlayer and the BBC Sounds app.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe unit forms part of Project Ada, a BBC plan to save at least \u00a3100M ($132M) by radically reimagining its workforce to compete with tech giants. <\/p>\n

\n\tNamed after Ada Lovelace, the pioneering 19th-century British mathematician, the project could result in thousands of non-content jobs \u2014 including HR, finance, legal, and operations \u2014 being outsourced to private sector companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Leigh Tavaziva, the BBC\u2018s chief operating officer, is stepping down amid continued leadership upheaval at the UK…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[243,96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-455442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bbc","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=455442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}