Lord Michael Grade, TV executive, businessman and former BBC controller, has been appointed the new chairman of Ofcom.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has announced that he will now oversee the UK’s media regulator.
Among the other candidates were fellow Conservatives Ed Vaizey and Stephen Gilbert.
The process was overseen by officer Sue Gray, who also conducted the recent “Partygate” investigation.
The recruitment process for the £142,000 job, which costs three days a week, has taken two years, with former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre reportedly at one stage in the race.
Earlier this year, Lord Grade warned that the BBC’s £159 license fee was “too much money” and suggested the company should close channels to cut costs.
“It’s like the monarchy – it exists to survive and it hasn’t given up any territory,” he told Radio 4’s Today program. “For example, why do we need both BBC Two and BBC Four? [Entire channels] Must go.”
Lord Grade, 79, who started his career as a sportswriter in the 1960s, was a former managing director of ITV and also worked at Channel 4.
His father was theater agent Leslie Grade and his uncle was ITV founder Lew Grade. He joined the family business as a theater agent in 1966 before moving to television in 1973.
He worked at London Weekend Television, weaving Bruce Forsyth off the BBC and commissioning programs such as The Professionals and The South Bank Show.
He joined the BBC in 1984 and two years later became BBC One’s controller. There he launched Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective and bought the Australian soap opera Neighbors for the station’s new daytime programming.
Sir Bob Geldof said no one else would have had “the bottle” to hand the network over to broadcast the 1985 Live Aid charity concert; while his other decisions were to abolish sci-fi favorite Doctor Who and discontinue coverage of beauty pageants, which he described as “an anachronism in modern times”.
So Michael Grade is back. How does he want to reform the media – and will he be free to do so?
One of the most experienced figures in British broadcasting, Grade was widely regarded as an effective and inspiring figure in the various managerial positions he has held. He has recently been a harsh critic of the BBC and especially the license fee. He also supported the privatization of Channel 4.
The government had wanted Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail, to do the job; but he withdrew from the race in a letter to the Times.
For all his outsiderness, this context makes this Conservative colleague a political appointment to an independent regulator. Exactly how much power he will have to achieve political goals is unclear. The BBC is largely self-governing. Ofcom has a respected chief executive in Melanie Dawes. Reform of Ofcom’s remit may require primary legislation.
No doubt Grade will be energetic, with a zeal for reform; but he will need political cover for any major changes he envisions.
Lord Grade took over as Chief Executive of Channel 4 in 1988, where he helped secure the rights to hit US shows such as Friends and ER.
After leaving the channel in 1997, he worked for First Leisure which ran nightclubs, bars and health and fitness clubs before moving to Pinewood and Shepperton film studios and taking a seat on the board of the Millennium Dome project.
In 2004 he became chairman of the BBC before heading up ITV for three years in 2006.
In 2011 he also became a conservative peer.
Ofcom has far-reaching powers over television, radio, telecommunications and postal services, dealing with licences, complaints and much more.
Earlier this month, for example, the watchdog revoked the license of Russian state-backed news channel RT, saying its parent company ANO TV Novosti was not “fit and appropriate to hold a UK broadcasting license”.
RT’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was investigated by Ofcom and the channel had already disappeared from UK screens. In response, RT, formerly Russia Today, called Ofcom “a tool of the government”.
And late last year Ofcom confirmed that BBC Three will return as a TV channel in February 2022 – six years after it went online.
Last November, former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre withdrew from the competition to become Ofcom’s next chairman.
In a letter to the Times, he said he would not reapply for the job after his original application was rejected by a recruitment panel.
The process was then repeated after the initial interviews failed to agree on a candidate.
But Dacre said he decided to take on an “exciting new job in the private sector” instead.
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