They approved strategy and policy, set objectives, oversaw complaints, and produced Annual Reports that documented the BBC's performance and compliance each year.
It has also been suggested that Harold Wilson's appointment of the former Tory minister Lord Hill of Luton as chairman of the Board of Governors in 1967 was motivated by a desire to undermine the radical, questioning agenda of Director-General Sir Hugh Greene.
Ironically, Wilson had attacked the appointment of Hill as Chairman of the Independent Television Authority by a Conservative government in 1963.
A later Director-General, Mark Thompson, said that staff were "quite mystified" by the rise of Margaret Thatcher and that the BBC had a left-wing bias at the time.
[1] In January 2004, Gavyn Davies, who had been appointed chairman of the Board of Governors by the Labour government in 2001, resigned in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry.