Michael Grade’s “defection” from the BBC to ITV has been treated in some quarters (not least sections of the BBC itself) as if it were the moral equivalent of Sir Alex Ferguson abandoning Manchester United for Chelsea. If there is an analogy with football here, it would be a switch to Everton — a club that was highly successful two decades ago, but which, with all due respect, cannot be compared with Manchester United now.
Mr Grade has a reputation for being talented and restless. He has demonstrated those qualities again in his astute tenure at the BBC and his decision to depart at virtually no notice whatsoever. The BBC should, however, be immensely grateful to Mr Grade rather than aggrieved at his leaving. In a short period, he steadied the corporation after the Hutton debacle, convinced the Government that an extremely generous licence fee system should be maintained, despite the transformation that has occurred in broadcasting over the past decade,, and recruited the able Mark Thompson from Channel 4 to act as Director-General. He also established a supposedly reformed board of trustees for the regulation of the BBC that is evidently so unimposing on those who are really in charge that the notion of him chairing it did not seem worth his while.
These are formidable achievements. That Mr Grade did not remain in place until the final details of the forthcoming licence fee settlement were agreed with the Treasury is almost immaterial. In any case, the arguments are about sums of money that are small compared with the huge revenue that the licence fee will be generating.
In truth, ITV needs Mr Grade far more than the BBC does. It is today a much smaller beast than its rival. The BBC overtook ITV in audience share in 2001 and has extended its advantage. It has doubled the budget and that income is guaranteed rather than subject to a roller-coaster (with more downs than ups) of an advertising market. The BBC dominates the list of the most popular shows and when it comes to the internet the contrast is less a battle of superpowers than the United States versus Uzbekistan. Mr Grade knows that the BBC is immensely powerful and that its exploits in electronic publishing and education and the creation of local websites are far from its original remit. It may take a BBC insider to work out how ITV should respond to this.
Mr Grade was entirely right to pledge that his appointment would usher in an era of stability while he concentrates on the content of what appears on television screens. ITV has some profound structural difficulties, but it would improve its plight immensely if it could produce high-quality widely watched television that did not depend on an annual visit to the Australian Outback. It should be a mass market channel that provides a diverse range of television.
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There is the danger instead that it is destined to die on its feet. There has been more speculation about who might assume control of ITV (Greg Dyke or ntl or Sky) than what the strategy for its recovery might be. Mr Grade believes in competition, and his parting assertion that it is in the interests of the BBC as well as ITV that there is a serious contest between the two is valid. The blunt reality at present is that British broadcasting is, at the very best, a loaded and unfair fight (with ITV trailing in the BBC’s wake) and this situation is no more good for creativity in radio and television than it would be for politics and democracy. Mr Grade’s greatest services to broadcasting may, hopefully, be yet to come.