Top Gear, BBC4 and the watershed: what we learned from Tony Hall

BBC DG Tony Hall said in a Radio Times interview that the corporation’s life is ‘not to be constantly out of trouble’. Photograph: BBC/Radio Times

Top Gear, empty chairs, the watershed, BBC4 and steps (not the band). Here are five things we learned from BBC director general Tony Hall’s interview in the Radio Times

• The 9pm watershed’s days are numbered. “The watershed is still a useful way of judging the content and sensitivities, and taste and decency issues. But has the watershed got a future in 20 or 30 years’ time? I suspect not.”

• Despite generating more controversies than you could shake a (gear) stick at, Hall predictably stands by Jeremy Clarkson. “It’s a programme loads of people love and it’s important that the BBC doesn’t have just one voice … My life and the BBC’s life is not to be constantly out of trouble. In a way, we should be awkward.”

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• He is non-committal about the prospect of “empty chairing” David Cameron if he refuses to take part in the leaders’ TV debates. “I’m not saying we are going to empty chair, I’m not saying we aren’t.”
  

• BBC4. It’s not going to go the way of BBC3, says Hall. It’s “not going to go”.

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• Hall has a pedometer that tells him how many steps he has taken each day. He tries to do 10,000. “Yesterday I did 14,930. I look at it and think, ‘It’s lunchtime and I’ve only done 4,000 paces but I want to do 10,000’, so I walk around the building or go for a walk. It keeps me active.”