- Jenny Abramsky
Jenny Abramsky, CBE, (born
7 October 1946 ) is chairman designate of the UK'sNational Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), due to take up her new role on 1st October 2008 [http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page15238.asp] . The NHMF makes grants to preserve heritage of outstanding national importance. Jenny Abramsky is currently the most senior woman in theBBC where she is Director of Audio and Music. She is the daughter of ProfessorChimen Abramsky and the granddaughter ofYehezkel Abramsky . She was educated atHolland Park School inLondon and theUniversity of East Anglia , where she read English.In 1969, Abramsky joined the BBC as a programmes operations assistant, and in 1973 was appointed as a producer of "
The World at One ". She became the first woman editor of the agenda-setting "Today " programme, ran the first Gulf WarRadio 4 News FM service, and went on to launch Britain's first continuous news and sport radio station,Five Live , before repeating the feat on TV withBBC News 24 . She also launched the BBC's online news website,news.bbc.co.uk which became one of the world's most highly accessed websites.Abramsky became Director of
BBC Radio in January 1999 and was subsequently promoted to theBBC 's Executive Board with over all responsibility for BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, andFive Live ; as well as the BBC digital radio stations 1Xtra, 6 Music, BBC 7, Five Live Sports Extra and the Asian Network; the three BBC orchestras based in England; and theProms . In 2006 she became Director of Audio and Music – adding online services, audio on demand andpodcast ing to her remit of broadcast radio. She had an annual programming budget of £236 million (about US $475m) and a staff of 1,681.Abramsky was widely considered a huge success at the BBC and was one of the few senior executives almost universally admired. Under her leadership, by the first three months of 2007 the
BBC 's radio stations had an audience share of 56.6 percent – compared with the 13.9 percent of listeners shared by all commercial radio broadcasters – and a reach of almost 33.5 million people – a record, according to "Guardian" newspaper (9 July 2007). The paper listed Abramsky as the 18th most powerful person in the UK's media, though she had slipped from No. 11 in the paper's 2006 ranking [http://media.guardian.co.uk/top100/0,,500000,00.html] .It was announced in June 2008 that Jenny Abramsky was retiring from the BBC after 39 years of service, to be replaced by
Tim Davie . [BBC Press Office, [http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/06_june/27/davie.shtml "Tim Davie appointed as Director of BBC Audio & Music"] , June 27, 2008]She is married to
Alasdair Liddell , former head of planning for the NHS, who quit to go into private business. Their son is a director and producer of science programmes, and their daughter is a producer forITV .Notes
External links
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/running/executive/eb_jenny_abramsky.shtml Jenny Abramsky's biography on the BBC website]
See also
*
List of British Jews
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