***UPDATE on November 22nd***

Well, we gave them a fright!

You may have heard, the BBC Trust has just announced a new Director General, Tony Hall. Within a week of OurBeeb launching our petition they phoned one man who said "Yes".

Our petition's call is that any candidate had to give us a short statement of their vision and principles beforehand.

We want the BBC to flourish, and be strong enough to defend itself from its obvious enemies. To do so, it must be open and accountable, and headed by someone can speak out in a digital age and will answer to the public.

Philip Pullman, a founding supporter, wrote "let's see if they take a blind bit of notice". Perhaps they didn't... but in five days your support began to take off, passing 3,700. It got favourable media coverage including in The Guardian and the Evening Standard. Stephen Fry, Brian Eno, Juliet Stevenson, Quentin Letts and Suzanne Moore all backed us. MPs said they would support us.

The Director of the Trust answered our request for a meeting saying "of course" he had heard of us and our demand -- but that they wanted to appoint  "very quickly". 

Our campaign may now be over yet it is continuing to make an impact. Anthony was on BBC World Service Newshour just now (26 minutes in).

We wish Tony Hall the best of luck and OurBeeb will seek to engage with him.

What is OurBeeb? It is a special project of the global website openDemocracy and its British section OurKingdom. We connect the dots and debate the big picture from the NHS and the economy to the human rights of the vulnerable. You can sign up for email alerts, or support OurBeeb by joining openDemocracy here.

If you are in London on 10 December, we are holding a meeting about the future of the BBC at the Café Oto in Dalston. Do join us. 

So, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

Together, we gave them a fright now lets make sure it is not forgotten.

The OurBeeb team; Anthony Barnett, Niki Seth-Smith, Olly Huitson Co-Editors, OurKingdom at openDemocracy.

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The new Director General of the BBC will be heading Britain’s most important cultural institution and current affairs broadcaster. He or she should not be appointed by the traditional, established closed-door process, which has just failed.

We therefore call on the BBC Trust not to compound this by a further purely secretive appointment. We call on any candidates to publish a short outline of their vision of how the BBC should be taken forward and the principles that lie behind it. And we call on the Trustees who will make the appointment to request and publish such statements from those they consider or short-list.

In this way the BBC will move towards the transparency and openness it needs to retain public trust.

Please add your name to the many on this web page, tell the Trust why you support it (we will let them know) and ask friends and colleagues to join us!

Initial supporters:

Anthony Barnett, Oliver Huitson, Niki Seth-Smith, Gemma Tortella-Procter, Lisa Appignanesi, James Curran, David Edgar, David Elstein, Richard Eyre, Brian Eno, Dan Hancox, Gerry Hassan, Lis Howell, Quentin Letts, Peter Oborne, Henry Porter, Philip Pullman, Clare Sambrook, Kamila Shamsie, Juliet Stevenson, Francis Wheen, Andreas Whittam Smith