LONDON — BBC reporters put their own bosses in the hot seat over their role in an expanding pedophilia scandal Monday, airing footage from a previously unseen expose of one of the BBC’s most popular entertainers and quizzing senior management about why they canned the bombshell program.

Monday night’s powerful but often awkward broadcast centered on revelations that late children’s television star Jimmy Savile was one of the country’s most prolific predators, suspected of sexually assaulting more than 200 children over his decades-long career. The scandal’s explosion has cut an ugly gash through the venerable broadcaster’s public image, a wound made all the worse by the revelation that executives there scrapped what would have been a hard-hitting expose of Savile’s misdeeds last year.