Here Today, dumbed-down tomorrow?

The BBC has already been criticised for changes to its political coverage. Now is not a good time to lose the editor of its flagship radio news programme. John Morrison reports

'The team are shell-shocked," said a senior figure in BBC News a few days ago as word of the departure of Rod Liddle, long-serving editor of Today, reverberated around the corporation. His departure came as no surprise to others, however. For months, Liddle's columns in The Guardian had been causing trouble for his bosses who, on orders from Greg Dyke, the Director-General, have to vet every word written by an employee for the print media.

Liddle had overstepped the mark before but had been persuaded to alter his copy. This time, however, through wilfulness or incompetence with the BBC email system, he failed to let his bosses see the final item in that week's column. It was a filler consisting mostly of undergraduate abuse aimed at the countryside lobby, but it advertised Liddle's pro-Labour sentiments loudly, and broke every rule in the BBC handbook on impartiality.

Within hours of the column appearing on Wednesday morning Liddle had been given an ultimatum: Today or The Guardian. He launched into a frantic round of negotiations with potential employers before finally deciding to bid farewell to his BBC pension and opt instead for writing – plus a possible role in a new political programme on BBC2.

Liddle was ripe for a move. There had been on and off discussions for months, but there was a problem. Being editor of Today spoils you for any other radio programme; he affected to despise television, and moving upstairs was a non-starter. For all his opposition to blood sports Liddle's ideas of what to do with a BBC manager are similar to a huntsman's ambitions for a fox: an enjoyable chase followed by a satisfying kill.

It is still far too soon to anoint the potential successor. There will be the usual attempts to find an outsider, but similar attempts in the recent past have always foundered on money: ITV pays its editors well, the BBC doesn't.

Whatever happens, the governors will be watching closely. This appointment really matters, not just because the Today programme has a loyal audience of influential people but because of what it will say about the hurricane currently reshaping the BBC's political coverage.

Research published in February revealed the existence of "a demographic weave of disengagement". This meant that unless dramatic changes were made, BBC political coverage would soon be watched largely by those aged 50 or older. A few weeks ago the response was announced: another £5m to be spent on new programmes and interactive web pages. And On the Record, flagship of BBC TV political coverage, would be quietly throttled.

Unfortunately, somebody had forgotten that the people who are interviewed at such length and in rigorous detail by On the Record really rather like it. These are Cabinet ministers, influential backbenchers and others with clout, whose noses had already been put out of joint when the BBC publicised its finding that nearly 40 per cent of people equated the word politician with that of crook. Many respondents said the BBC needed to break with the Westminster establishment and allow "real people" to voice their opinion.

In Westminster, curiously enough, this was not greeted with universal acclaim. The BBC governors, whose job it is to smell potential political trouble before it gets too close, began to find an unpleasant odour wafting around their nostrils. So now, having become acutely alert to any sign of dumbing down of political coverage in the search for new audiences, some intend to use the editorship of Today as a test case. If there any signs of going downmarket, says an insider, "there will be trouble".

Despite having become a focus for this threat of unprecedented conflict between the governors and the Director-General, the editor of Today is actually quite a lowly figure in the BBC hierarchy. He or she is one among many editors who report to the head of radio news, who in turn reports to the head of news, who in turn reports to the Director-General. The job is not particularly well paid – about £65,000 plus fairly meagre perks: a mid-range car, private health insurance, and a home computer linked into the IT behemoth at TV Centre. The editor runs a team of about 50, split into day and night teams working round the clock. And while not actually producing the programme each day, he or she is intimately involved in running-order decisions. It is a punishing schedule – literally dawn till dusk, and much later when a big story breaks.

Away from the output desk, the editor has to run a complex £5m budget, answer for Today's misdeeds to everyone from the Number 10 press secretary to Mr Angry of Basingstoke, tinker with the website, and manage the staff. The new editor will have some managing to do. One insider said Liddle had left a lot of bruised toes behind him on Today: "They held him in awe – but they didn't much like him. They're not all regretting his departure. Someone needs to get in there and start looking after them."

But, liked or not, Liddle leaves big shoes to fill. By common consent he has kept Today secure on its lordly pinnacle. The new editor will be expected to take it to new heights. The remit – "original and distinctive journalism" – remains the same, or, as one insider put it to me: "Above all, this has to be a programme that breaks stories."

The word from within BBC News is that "the BBC is not looking for a safe pair of hands as the new editor".

It will be vital to keep up Today's awesome hit rate of news-making interviewees – an increasingly difficult task given the strength of the competition, not least from Radio Five Live's sparky breakfast show. The euro referendum, if and when it comes, will be seen as a key test: Today will be expected to deliver the main players, morning after morning, testing their arguments to destruction and setting the agenda for the rest of the day. The new editor will be expected to build on the programme's growing reputation for original reportage, and to hang on to Jim Naughtie and John Humphrys as presenters for as long as possible while helping new ones to emerge.

Then there is the perennial problem of Radio 4's ageing audience. Today has a crucial role in attracting a new, younger audience. "The programme," I was told, "has to bring in the next generation. Today has to grow a new audience of younger movers and shakers, people who matter, the next establishment if you like, who will feel obliged to listen as the current lot already do."

This seems clear and straightforward. But some of the governors will take a good deal of convincing that a strategy of pursuing younger listeners is not code for dumbing down. "Today's role is exploring issues and holding this government to account," one person close to them told me, sternly. "Today's audience is going up. The governors are very proud of that. The programme is doing something right. There'd be a hell of a lot of sensitivity among the governors to diluting that."

John Morrison edited many BBC News programmes, including 'Newsnight'