Tony Ageh

Tony Ageh
OBE
Ageh in 2012
Born1959 (age 64–65)
Chelsea, London
OccupationChief Digital Officer
EmployerNew York Public Library
Known forBBC iPlayer – BBC Genome
Tony Ageh's voice
recorded November 2013

Tony Ageh OBE, (born 23rd December, 1959) was until 2023 the New York Public Library's Chief Digital Officer[1] having previously been Controller of Archive Development[2] at the BBC.

His first job as a school leaver was production assistant on Home Organist, working for Richard Desmond, subsequently the proprietor of Express Newspapers.

He then moved to Publishing Holdings, which owned list titles including What Mortgage and What Telephone.[3] 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 gain national distribution and upgrade its production to magazine quality. Also during the 1980s he joined 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,[3] rival to listings magazine Time Out, which eventually ceased publication in 1993.

He was invited to join the Guardian Media Group in 1990[4] by Jim Markwick, then managing director.[3] By the mid-1990s he was head of product development at The Guardian where he launched "The Guide",[4] a listings supplement,[4] 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.

He joined the BBC after quitting the UK listings and information service UpMyStreet in 2002.[3][5] At the BBC he led the team which devised and developed the BBC iPlayer, which necessitated no fewer than 84 internal BBC presentations.[4] In October 2008 he was appointed as the Controller of BBC Archive Development [2] in which he championed the public service use of the BBC's archive through products such as BBC Genome[6] and The research and education space (RES)[7] built in partnership with JISC and the British Universities Film & Video Council, working with former Guardian colleague Bill Thompson[8] .

He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours.[9]

References

  1. ^ Kiss, Jemima (6 April 2016). "BBC digital expert Tony Ageh poached by New York Public Library". The Guardian.
  2. ^ a b "Tony Ageh appointed BBC Controller of Archive Development". BBC Press Office. 10 October 2008. Retrieved 18 February 2009.
  3. ^ a b c d Speakers: Tony Ageh" Archived 2013-07-02 at archive.today, Media Festival Arts 2010
  4. ^ a b c d Jemima Kiss "Tony Ageh on the BBC Archive and how to remake the internet", The Guardian, 1 November 2010
  5. ^ Owen Gibson "Co-founder quits Upmystreet.com", Media Guardian, 8 August 2002
  6. ^ "About this project". BBC. Retrieved 21 October 2014.
  7. ^ "The research and education space (RES)". JISC. Retrieved 31 March 2016.
  8. ^ Bunz, Mercedes (2 November 2009). "Pair behind first Guardian website back together for BBC Archive". London: Guardian. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
  9. ^ "BBC iPlay creator gets royal seal of approval". The Voice. 30 December 2014. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
Media offices
Unknown Controller, Internet, BBC
2003–2008 		Succeeded byas Controller, bbc.co.uk
New title Controller of Archive Development, BBC
2008–2016 		Succeeded by
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