The New York Times Company has named BBC director general Mark Thompson as president and chief executive, following nine months in which the company's future leadership was uncertain. 
 
 Thompson has spent his entire career in television, primarily at the BBC, a valued tenure as the company looks to expand its digital video operations. 
 
 Via Times reporters Christine Haughney and Amy Chozick: 
 
 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 that 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. ... 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 digital 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. 
 
 The full details here. 
 
 UPDATE (5:22 p.m.): Publisher Arthur Sulzberger's memo to staff, via Capital New York: 
 
 Dear Colleagues, After a thorough search, which gave us the opportunity to meet some of the most thoughtful executives inside and outside of our industry, we have today announced that Mark Thompson, the outgoing Director-General of the BBC, will become our new president and CEO. Our board unanimously concluded that Mark is exactly the right person to lead The New York Times Company at this particular moment in time. He is a highly regarded executive who comes to us from one of the other great global media brands, known for high-quality content and excellence in journalism, the BBC. And importantly, under Mark’s direction, the BBC also became known as a place of constant innovation. Mark will work closely with the board and with me as we work to extend our own culture of innovation and transformation and as we continue to expand our reach both around the globe and onto new and emerging digital platforms. Mark is joining an organization where we already have great talent throughout the ranks. His appointment will strengthen our already powerful organization with new ideas and fresh insights. Mark is in the process of relocating to New York from London, and we expect him to start in November. When he arrives, we will schedule employee town halls, so you will have the opportunity to meet him in person. Please join me in welcoming Mark to our company. Arthur 
 
 UPDATE 2 (5:26 p.m.): Oh, and he once reportedly bit his colleague's arm. ||||| New York Times Co. (NYT) named Mark Thompson as its next chief executive officer after a nine-month search, turning to a leader who steered the British Broadcasting Corp. through belt tightening and job cuts. 
 
 Thompson, who was the BBC’s director general, will relocate to New York and report to Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in his new role, the company said yesterday in a statement. Thompson, 55, started at the BBC in 1979 as a production trainee. 
 
 “Our board concluded that Mark’s experience and his accomplishments at the BBC made him the ideal candidate to lead the Times Co. at this moment in time when we are highly focused on growing our business through digital and global expansion,” Sulzberger said in the statement. 
 
 Times Co. is counting on Thompson to reignite sales growth and accelerate a shift to the Internet. Online subscriptions at its flagship newspaper propelled a 73 percent gain in circulation in the six-month period ended in March, while print readership declined. Still, Web advertising and subscriber fees haven’t been enough to offset years of shrinking sales. 
 
 Thompson announced plans in March to step down from the BBC. Under his leadership, the commercial-free network, funded by fees from U.K. television viewers, has cut jobs and moved some offices and production outside London in recent years after its funding was frozen. The BBC has undergone spending cuts of more than 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) since 2008. 
 
 ‘Global Authority’ 
 
 While the nonprofit BBC has a very different model from Times Co., they are both considered preeminent news organizations, said Ken Doctor, a Santa Cruz, California-based analyst at Outsell Inc., a research firm focused on the publishing industry. 
 
 “They’re both news companies with incredible global authority and also both are known for being a bit of a stick in the mud,” Doctor said in an interview. 
 
 Times Co. has adopted a strategy of offloading businesses and tightening its focus on its flagship newspaper. It sold its stake in Fenway Sports Group, owner of the Boston Red Sox, for $93 million this year and completed the sale of its regional newspaper division for $143 million. The publisher still owns the Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette newspapers. 
 
 Times Co. said last week that it had entered talks to sell About.com, aiming to salvage a portion of its bet on the informational website. A person with knowledge of the deal said the New York Times is trying to sell the Web property to Answers.com for $270 million. Times Co. bought it for $410 million in 2005. 
 
 The shares climbed less than 1 percent to $9.09 yesterday in New York. They have risen 18 percent this year. 
 
 Family Control 
 
 In addition to coping with a declining print-news industry, Thompson faces the challenge of working within a family business. The Ochs-Sulzberger family controls the company through an eight-member family trust, which elects two-thirds of the Times Co. board through its Class B shares. 
 
 The remaining one-third of directors are elected by owners of the more commonly traded Class A shares. The dual-stock system is meant to preserve editorial independence and insulate the company from the vagaries of public markets. 
 
 The end result is the CEO has less power than the chairman, said Alex Jones, author of “The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times.” 
 
 Deceptive Title? 
 
 “The position of CEO is a little bit deceptive at the Times because the operational head of the company is the chairman, and that’s Arthur Sulzberger,” Jones said in an interview. “The CEO’s job will be whatever Arthur decides it should be.” 
 
 Times Co. has been without a CEO since Janet Robinson was ousted in December. In searching for a replacement, the company had emphasized candidates with Internet experience. Paul Sagan, Akamai Technologies Inc.’s CEO, and Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt, were discussed, according to people familiar with the search. 
 
 While Thompson doesn’t come from a technology company, he’s credited with helping to transform the BBC into a more digitally focused media service. He oversaw a global news website and introduced iPlayer, which lets people in the U.K. watch BBC programs on computers and mobile devices. 
 
 Thompson also has clashed with News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who has opposed TV license fees -- the BBC’s main source of revenue. Since the New York Times competes with News Corp.’s Wall Street Journal, Thompson’s skirmishes with Murdoch probably earned him points, Doctor said. 
 
 “That’s the icing on the cake,” he said. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Edmund Lee in New York at elee310@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net ||||| Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, is gaining a reputation as something of a rottweiler as he slashes into the corporation's staffing structure. 
 
 Yesterday this image took on a physical manifestation when allegations emerged that, when he was editor of the Nine O'Clock News, Mr Thompson sank his teeth into the arms of a colleague in a canine-like display of workplace frustration. 
 
 The BBC yesterday played down the incident, which has been the subject of frenzied gossip within the BBC as the story was passed around by email this week, as "high jinks and horseplay". 
 
 But Mr Thompson's victim, a junior member of staff who went on to be Kate Adie's producer, has disclosed that he considered making a formal complaint about the incident at the time. 
 
 The story emerged because Jeremy Paxman, the Newsnight presenter, was preparing to interview Mr Thompson for an internal BBC event and emailed the producer to ask if the incident - the subject of apocryphal tales in the corporation's newsroom - really happened. The producer, Anthony Massey, replied in florid terms. 
 
 "It was late summer or early autumn of 1988 when he [Thompson] was the newly appointed editor of the Nine O'Clock News, and I was a Home News Organiser. It was 9.15 in the morning, in the middle of the old sixth floor newsroom. 
 
 "I went up to his desk to talk about some story after the 9.00 meeting we used to have then. I was standing next to him on his right, and he was sitting reading his horoscope in the Daily Star (I always remember that detail). 
 
 "Before I could say a word he suddenly turned, snarled, and sank his teeth into my left upper arm (leaving marks through the shirt, but not drawing blood). It hurt. I pulled my arm out of his jaws, like a stick out of the jaws of a labrador." 
 
 Massey told his then boss, Chris Cramer, now a senior CNN executive, that he wanted to "bring the whole BBC disciplinary process" against Mr Thompson, but the incident "lost momentum" when Mr Massey was sent on a month-long assignment abroad. 
 
 Paxman, in his reply, said he found the tale extraordinary. "If any of this came out, he'd be toast," he wrote of Thompson. 
 
 Mr Massey passed the email exchange with Paxman to a friend, who passed it to other colleagues in the BBC, and it was quickly forwarded to scores of people, and leaked to the Guardian. 
 
 Today Mr Massey was refusing to comment: "I'm afraid I cannot help." But the BBC, concerned that it might be seen to victimise the producer for what it admitted was "just gossip" that was never intended for publication, said there would be no recriminations and that Mr Massey was expected to turn up for work as normal last night. 
 
 After speaking to Mr Thompson, a BBC spokesman confirmed there had been an incident, but attempted to play down the story. 
 
 "There was an incident 17 years ago when Mark was editor of the Nine O'Clock News. Mark would have been about 30. There was a pretty robust atmosphere in the newsroom then. There was a lot of horseplay. People can recollect there were rows about allocation of camera crews. 
 
 "There was some high jinks going on and Mark leant forward and did something like a biting gesture. He thought it would be quite funny and it would defuse things but clearly it was hugely misinterpreted. 
 
 "Then he walked off, thinking nothing of it. Somebody went up to Mark and said that Anthony had taken it the wrong way. Mark apologised. 
 
 "Our view is that it was a long time ago, there was an apology at the time, and it was high jinks and horseplay." 
 
 · To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 7239 9857 
 
 · If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
– The New York Times has a new boss—Mark Thompson, the head executive of the BBC, reports the Boston Globe. Thompson is set to take over the Gray Lady in November as president and CEO, taking over from Janet Robinson, who was ousted from the Times last December. "It is a real privilege to be asked to join the Times Company as it embarks on the next chapter in its history," Thompson said in a statement. "They’re both news companies with incredible global authority and also both are known for being a bit of a stick in the mud," one analyst tells Bloomberg. Thompson has spent his entire career in broadcasting and his appointment is a sign that the Times is planning to shift further into the Internet and multimedia in the future, say observers. (Amusing side note: Politico dug up an old Guardian story about the time Thompson bit a colleague.)