Newly appointed director general of BBC, Lord Tony Hall, pledges to keep corporation a world class institution ITN

Royal Opera House chief executive Tony Hall has been appointed as director general of the BBC, just a week-and-a-half after the hapless George Entwistle resigned from the job – in a secret, emergency process aimed at restoring stability to the crisis hit broadcaster. Hall is due to take up his post in early March 2013 when acting director general Tim Davie steps down.

Lord Patten, writing to BBC staff on Thursday to announce the appointment, said that Hall – Lord Hall of Birkenhead, was "the right person to lead the BBC out of its current crisis and help rebuild public trust in the organisation" – after an extraordinary period in which the broadcaster has been enveloped by criticism over the handling of the Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal.

Hall, 61, was director of BBC news, and was a candidate for the top job in 1999 when Greg Dyke secured the position. He went off to run the Royal Opera House for 11 years, taking over an organisation that was itself in crisis. Under his tenure, the Opera House tried to shed off its elitist image, by hosting televised public performances outdoors in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere.

Patten said that Hall was "an insider and is currently an outsider. As an ex-BBC man he understands how the corporation's culture and behaviour make it, at its best, the greatest broadcaster in the world.

"And from his vantage point outside the BBC, he understands the criticisms that are levelled at the corporation – both those that are justified and those that are not. But perhaps most importantly, given where we now find ourselves, his experience as a former BBC journalist will prove invaluable as the BBC looks to rebuild its reputation in this area."

He will be paid £450,000 a year – the same as his predecessor, but substantially below the sums paid to Mark Thompson, who left the BBC in September.

The BBC Trust said it took the unusual approach of making a direct approach from to Hall and he accepted without the broadcaster speaking to anybody else. Hall did not apply for the job when it last became vacant as a result of Mark Thompson's departure earlier this year – partly because at 61 he felt he was too old.

Patten said that the accelerated recruitment process was justified in the interests of licence fee payers, with the chairman noting that "Tony Hall wasn't available" when Entwistle was appointed in July.

Alan Yentob, the BBC's creative director, said that he believed that Hall was "the right man to run the BBC" given that he has both experience of the organisation and spent "10 years outside the BBC". At 61, Yentob said that he believed that Hall had "the judgment and wisdom" to run the BBC – and that his age was not a barrier to running an organisation despite the intense pressures that saw off Entwistle.

Hall has run the Opera House since April 2001 but had been telling close friends he was looking for a change – while maintaining in public that he was "happy in his job" as speculation about his name swirled.

"It's been a difficult few weeks – but together we'll get through it. I'm committed to ensuring our news services are the best in the world. I'm committed to making this a place where creative people, the best and the brightest, want to work," he said.

"And I know from my first days here as a news trainee, to my time as head of news and current affairs, to my time now at the Royal Opera House, that I can't do it on my own. Having the right teams working together, sparking off each other, is key."

The BBC said that Hall is already in receipt of a corporation pension after more nearly 30 years' service and will not benefit from any extra pension payments as director general.

Egon Zehnder, which was paid about £200,000 for advising the BBC on the disastrous appointment of Entwistle, helped out for free on this occasion.

Hall was born in Birkenhead and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Keble College, Oxford. He joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1973 and worked on a wide range of TV and radio news programmes, before being made editor of the BBC1 Nine O'Clock News in 1985.

Two years later he was appointed editor of news and current affairs, the first time the role had been combined, as part of then deputy director general John Birt's at the time controversial reorganisation of the BBC's news division.

Hall became director of news and current affairs in 1990 and was regarded as one of Birt's key lieutenants after he became director general in 1992.

He ran BBC News for more than a decade before leaving the corporation for the Royal Opera House in 2001, overseeing the launch of BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC News 24 and BBC News Online.

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