We called it first: the Board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is on the verge of announcing the appointment of Singapore-based Google executive Michelle Guthrie as successor to outgoing managing director Mark Scott. She is expected to start at Aunty's Ultimo bunker in April.

Guthrie ticks pretty much every box there is: female, digitally savvy, international experience and, before now (and like Scott in 2005), never mentioned in dispatches. Before she joined Google in 2011, she ran media-focused private equity shop Providence Equity Partners, was legal director at FOXTEL, an executive at BSkyB in London and chief executive of News Corp's Hong Kong-based pay TV business, Star.