LONDON (AFP) - Tony Hall, the chief executive of Britain’s Royal Opera House, was Thursday named director-general of the BBC after his predecessor quit over the corporation’s reporting of child sex abuse. Hall has been given the job of guiding the world’s largest public broadcaster through a major crisis sparked by allegations that one of its top stars, the late Jimmy Savile, was a serial child sex offender. Hall, 61, joined the BBC as a trainee and rose through the ranks to become head of news between 1996 and 2001 before leaving to take charge of the prestigious Royal Opera House. Chris Patten, the head of the BBC Trust which appoints the director-general, said Hall was “an insider and is currently an outsider”.