David Witherow was appointed Executive Chairman designate of the Radio Authority with effect from July 2003.

David was appointed a Member of the Radio Authority in December 1998 and became Deputy Chair for four years from 18 January 2000.

He has spent more than forty years in the fields of journalism and broadcasting. Born in Birmingham, England, in 1937, and educated in that city and at Cambridge University, he joined the Press Association, Britain's leading national news agency, in 1960 as a graduate trainee. In 1963 he moved to the news department of the BBC World Service (then the BBC External Services).

He was appointed Editor of External Services News in 1972, in charge of more than one hundred journalists and responsible for the news output in English and some 40 other languages. He moved to BBC Television News in 1977 and then, after a spell in the BBC's central management, he was appointed Head of BBC Monitoring Service at Caversham in 1980. He returned to the World Service in 1985 as Controller of Resources and Administration and was appointed Deputy Managing Director of the World Service in 1989. He also served on a number of BBC-wide task forces and committees, and was Managing Director of BBC MPM Ltd. which provided business education in Russia and Eastern Europe.

After retiring from the BBC in 1994, David Witherow worked as a broadcasting consultant concentrating on the implementation of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). On a part-time consultancy basis he was in charge of the start-up of the BBC's DAB services in 1995-96. He was elected the first President of the World DAB Forum in October 1995, and in 2000 received WorldDAB's Selemark Award for Exceptional Services to DAB. He was also a member of the Steering Committee of the UK National DAB Forum from 1995 to 1997.

David is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Radio Academy.

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Revised: September 30, 2003