Tony Ageh

Tony Ageh is currently Controller, BBC Internet, bbc.co.uk. He joined the BBC from the UK listings and information service UpMyStreet in 2002. At the BBC he led the team which devised and developed the BBC iPlayer. His first job as a school leaver was production assistant on Home Organist, working for Richard Desmond, now proprietor of Express Newspapers. He then moved to Publishing Holdings, which owned list titles including What Mortgage and What Telephone. With four colleagues he set up and ran publishing co-operative Brass Tacks, publishers of Mortgage Magazine, during which time he helped football fanzine When Saturday Comes to get national distribution and upgrade its production to magazine quality. Also during the 1980s he joined (now Sir) Richard Branson's short-lived London Listings magazine, Event, set up while Time Out journalists were on strike, then became publisher of City Limits magazine, rival to listings magazine Time Out, which folded in 1993. He was invited to join the Guardian Media Group by Jim Markwick, then MD, with a brief to create new opportunities for the Scott Trust-owned newspaper group. By the mid-1990s he was head of product development at "The Guardian" where he launched The Guide, "Wired UK" and introduced online content to a UK national newspaper for the first time. From The Guardian he rejoined Branson to work on the launch of virgin.net, originally a portal for the Virgin group of companies, now part of Virgin Media.
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinbell/28225926/ Photo of Tony Ageh]