From Print to Broadcasting, With a Detour at EasyJet

After a “relentless” eight years as the chief executive of budget airline EasyJet, Carolyn McCall got a call about potentially leading Britain’s largest commercial public broadcaster ITV. Initially, she wasn’t keen on the idea. "I wanted a rest after EasyJet," McCall said. "There's rarely a quiet moment at ITV, but you get peaks and then it goes quiet. But with airliners, it's peaks all of the time." McCall is no stranger to a pivot. After earning a degree in education, she spent time as a teacher before going back to school for a master's in politics. Her second career began at The Guardian Media Group in advertising sales in 1986, where she stayed for almost a quarter century. McCall helped launch Wired magazine, then The Guardian's website in 1996, and ultimately rose to CEO in 2006 before moving over to EasyJet in 2010. It was a cup of coffee with former chair of ITV Peter Bazalgette that persuaded her to take on the top job at the broadcaster. She also relished the challenge of the media disruption taking place at the time. "I felt that ITV hadn’t yet addressed it, and I think the board felt that. And so they were ahead of where the company was in a way; it was a weird thing,” she said, calling the experience "transformational.” Since McCall took over at ITV in 2018, the broadcaster has undergone a streaming revolution while leading new programming aimed at the 16-34 demographic, most notably reality series Love Island. In 2021, McCall launched the Media for Equity investment program, a similar accelerator to one she started at EasyJet, this time supporting burgeoning businesses in the media sector to develop new technologies. This saw ITV take a stake in startups such as location-finding platform What3words in exchange for access to the broadcaster’s multiplatform advertising inventory. “That is so obvious for ITV,” McCall said. “We’ve got some amazing companies now in that portfolio.” Another initiative called Studio 55 also launched last year to nurture future media companies such as lifestyle content hub Woo, helping it scale while tapping into its younger audiences in the process. “What I like about the whole digital world is you're constantly learning and you're constantly iterating and you're constantly evolving. No one is always right, and no one is always wrong," she said. "It's just iterative." Big mistake It's not specific mistakes that McCall remembers; it's learning how to approach them. "When you have tough times, you actually learn more from those," she said. "It's important to capture that and to say, ‘OK, what would we do differently?’" Lesson learned “The people who work for you make you successful or not," she said. "It's not widgets, it's not a factory, it's not mechanical—it's about people. It's about motivations, it's about mission, it's about purpose." How she got the gig After eight years as CEO of EasyJet, she was approached directly to take over ITV by its former chairman. The opportunity stemmed from her track record at The Guardian Media Group, where she was regarded as a digital innovator. Pro tip “When an opportunity comes along, say, ‘Yeah, I want to be a part of that,’" McCall said. "It stretches you, and you learn. You learn from everything."

Leadership & Talent

From Print to Broadcasting, With a Detour at EasyJet

ITV's Carolyn McCall honed her reputation as a digital innovator at The Guardian

Stephen Lepitak

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Stephen Lepitak