Greg Dyke, the former Director-General of the BBC, will concede that he has no chance of succeding to the vacant chief executive position at ITV in an interview with GMTV that is due to be transmitted tomorrow.
Mr Dyke, who was speaking publicly about ITV for the first time since his failed bid of earlier this year, also accused Sir Richard Branson of “sour grapes” in complaining about BSkyB’s raid on ITV’s shares last week.
“I don’t think that this board would appoint me,” Mr Dyke said. “I can understand why they wouldn’t appoint me. I mean, I did try and buy the company and they could have sold to us of course . . . So I don’t think that’s an option, so I don’t think about it.”
Mr Dyke would be a popular choice with programmers and advertisers, although not necessarily with the City. He cut his teeth in commercial television, rising to become managing director of LWT, before it was bought by Granada.
He later became BBC Director-General, but was forced out in the wake of the Hutton inquiry.
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Mr Dyke also gave little support to NTL and Sir Richard Branson — NTL’s largest shareholder — in their battle to persuade regulators to unwind Sky’s purchase of a 17.9 per cent stake in ITV.
BSkyB, which is chaired by Rupert Murdoch, is 39.1 per cent owned by News Corporation, the parent company of The Times.
“You know that you watched Richard Branson this week complaining about this, saying that Murdoch’s a threat to democracy.
“Well you could argue that Murdoch’s a threat to democracy, but I don’t think that you can argue it because he’s just screwed up your latest deal . . . that’s a bit sour grapes.”
The former BBC boss said that he did not believe that Sky would influence the policy of ITV.
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However, he added that “the only problem for ITV is [Rupert] Murdoch will now decide who’s the next owner really, because if you own nearly 20 per cent you’re pretty powerful in determining where it goes”.
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