Times Co. Names Mark Thompson Chief Executive

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY and AMY CHOZICK

The New York Times Company has named Mark Thompson, the outgoing director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation, as its new president and chief executive.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of the Times Company and the newspaper's publisher, announced the appointment late Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Thompson, 55, will join the company in November. In addition to his executive roles, he will also sit on the board of directors.

“The New York Times is one of the world's greatest news providers and a media brand of immense future potential both in the U.S. and around the world,” Mr. Thompson said in a company statement. “It is a real privilege to be asked to join the Times Company as it embarks on the next chapter in its history.”

The Times has been without a chief executive since Janet Robinson left in December 2011. Since then, Mr. Sulzberger has said the company was looking for a candidate with experience in the digital world and across multiple platforms.

In a statement, Mr. Sulzberger praised Mr. Thompson as “a gifted and experienced executive with strong credentials whose leadership at the BBC helped it to extend its trusted brand identity into new digital products and services,” adding that his skills “speak to our future.”

Mr. Thompson had said he would leave his current position after the London Olympics, which ended Sunday. Aside from a 2002 to 2004 stint as chief executive of Britain's Channel 4, Mr. Thompson has spent his career at the BBC, mostly overseeing the news organization's television coverage.

Mr. Thompson's reign at the BBC has largely been categorized as one of digital expansion and as having an emphasis on developing the BBC internationally. For example, he championed the BBC's collaboration in YouView, a joint venture with ITV, Channel 4 and other channels tha t provides digital TV. He has also overseen several rounds of cost cutting at the BBC, which depends largely on mandatory license fees, not advertising, for its operating budget.

A graduate of the University of Oxford's Merton College, Mr. Thompson first joined the BBC in 1979 as a production trainee. After working as an editor on the BBC's flagship “Nine O'Clock News” and the news program “Panorama,” he graduated to overseeing BBC2 and serving as the BBC's director of national and regional broadcasting.

In 2000, Mr. Thompson became the BBC's director of television. He has served as BBC Worldwide's director general since 2004 and added chairman to his title this year. As director general, he oversaw 20,000 employees globally and 400,000 hours of programming, according to the BBC Web site.

Mr. Thompson has frequently weighed in on controversies about the BBC's coverage. In 2010, he told The New Statesman, a current affairs magazine, that in the past, particularly during the Thatcher years, the BBC had a “massive” left-leaning bias, but added that the bias no longer existed. In June, the BBC fielded more than 4,000 complaints about its coverage of the queen's diamond jubilee. Mr. Thompson apologized for “some inaccuracies in the commentary that we shouldn't have had.”

Mr. Thompson currently lives in Oxford, with his wife, the American-born Jane Blumberg. They have three children.

Mr. Thompson will be joining The Times as it continues to face challenges posed by changing reader habits and a shifting advertising market. Last month, the company reported a net loss of $88 million for the second quarter of 2012, and advertising revenue at its News Media Group, which includes The Times, The International Herald Tribune and The Boston Globe, fell 6.6 percent.

A positive sign for The Times has been the success of its digital-subscription strategy, which was introduced in March 2011. This year, paid digi tal subscribers to the Web site, e-reader and other digital editions of The Times and The International Herald Tribune increased by 12 percent from the first quarter to the second, to 509,000 from 454,000.

Over the last year, the Times company has been shedding assets to focus on its core newspaper business. Last year, the company sold its remaining assets in the Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox, and in January, it sold its Regional Media Group - the division that included the regional newspapers - to Halifax Media Holdings for $143 million.

In early August, the company acknowledged that it was exploring the sale of its About group, which includes the online resources guide About.com. A person briefed on the discussions said it had reached a preliminary deal to sell About to Answers.com for $270 million.

The market has generally reacted positively to the sales of these assets. Shares in the company, which sold for $5.50 last September, clo sed at $9.09 on Tuesday.