If you care for the BBC, start worrying: Michael Grade is a threat in plain sight
As one of his many criticisms of the BBC in recent years, Michael Grade called the broadcaster’s coverage of partygate “gleeful and disrespectful”, which must now seem ironic given the government’s own behaviour in appointing the Tory peer, without even a nod to the spirit of public sector appointment norms.
It used to be the case that anyone harbouring ambitions for a top regulatory job, especially one in which they would be called upon to opine on impartiality, for example, should at the very least give the appearance that they were above the fray.
But that’s not Lord Grade. The former chairman of the corporation may, as the government’s choice as chair of Ofcom, be called upon to judge the BBC’s journalism. But we already know how he feels about the BBC’s journalism. Just one more lapse, he wrote last year, just one, would “bring the house down”.
We know how he feels about its principal source of income, the licence fee: at £159 a year, not only “regressive” but, in his view, “excessive”.
We know what he thinks about how it pays staff and stars on receipt of that licence fee. “It may not be a lot of money to Gary Lineker or many of the BBC executives and commentators,” said the never conspicuously underpaid former head of ITV, Channel 4 and of the BBC itself, “but it’s a heck of a lot of money for the majority of people in this country.” No need to read tea leaves there then.
Wonder what Grade thinks of the future of Channel 4? Why wonder? For he has also made it known that Channel 4 should be privatised and that internet platforms need to be held in check. What about YouTube? He once derided that as a “parasite”. You may agree, you may disagree. But it’s hard to make the case that he comes to any of this with clean
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