Grade's move to ITV is about the money, not the job

Connect: 'It was an opportunity I could not resist," said 63-year-old Michael Grade of his resignation as BBC chairman to become…

Connect:'It was an opportunity I could not resist," said 63-year-old Michael Grade of his resignation as BBC chairman to become the boss at ITV. He added that it was a "great privilege" to take on the role of head honcho of the BBC's main terrestrial rival.

Then again, most people - particularly those in their 60s - might find irresistible the chance to increase their pay and pension 10-fold or more.

Not Michael Grade, however. "You never do a job for the money," he said. "You do it because you want to do it and think you can do it." That clears that up, then. It's great that television produces such people that a hike in pay from about €207,000 a year to a "base salary" (what a vile term!) of around €1.2 million - with €2 million or more a year likely via bonuses - is really immaterial.

Imagine some nasty types suggested that Grade was moving for the money. It's clear such cretins do not understand the motivations of great people. "It has been a tough career decision to leave the BBC but it was an opportunity I could not resist, given my family's history in the founding of ITV (his uncle was Lew Grade) and my background at London Weekend Television," he said.

READ MORE

Well, it's always tough to decide between one job and another paying a mere 10 or more times the salary. What a horrific dilemma! I don't know about you but for some reason, I'm a little sceptical of Grade's dismissive remark that "you never do it for the money".

In fact, I'd suggest that most people might be persuaded by a 1,000 per cent rise in pay and perks.

This is, of course, a radical and arguably even spiteful view from below. Yet as I'm unable to accept Grade's sentiments regarding his changing of jobs, it seems to me that his PR is insulting. In itself, that's not unusual but perhaps he might have said that he at least considered the loot he would make in his new job. Not likely though - that sort of trivia doesn't influence the great.

Broadcasters - people such as Bruce Forsyth, Des Lynam and Clive James - have left the BBC for much bigger pay packets at ITV. They acknowledge it too, even though their careers sometimes plummeted towards oblivion as a result. Perhaps it's such acknowledgement that makes their defections from state to commercial broadcasting easier to understand.

Anyway, though it's unlikely that many outside media - indeed television - circles care much about Michael Grade's jobs, he may have shafted the BBC. That could have repercussions for us all. He can't, after all, "un-know" the corporation's plans and this must give him an advantage in the battle for viewers. Presumably that's a part of his attractiveness to ITV.

Competition from digital and satellite channels and the internet was always going to hit commercial television dependent on advertising. Despite its growth, advertising's pool of money remains limited. As in programming, where too few watchable efforts are spread across too many channels, generating boredom and endless repeats, today's advertising budgets are too thinly spread.

Then there is the fact that Charles Allen, who resigned as ITV's chief executive in August, ran the channel for shareholders rather than viewers. His was real bean-counter television - cheap phone-quiz programmes, third-rate "reality" shows and recycling even half-successes on loads of channels. That's the great problem with commercial TV: deliver audiences but turn a profit too.

ITV is still comfortably Britain's biggest commercial broadcaster with more than 20 per cent of the audience. However, its share has shrunk alarmingly in recent years. Mind you, when a TV channel broadcasts a show called Celebrity Wrestling, it's difficult to have much sympathy for its failure. In fact, the mind that thought it up should be decommissioned.

Michael Grade will replace ITV's current chairman Peter Burt as well as Charles Allen. He has been negotiating with the British government to win an increase in the annual BBC licence fee. The increases are needed, the BBC claims, to pay for high-definition television and the move into new digital services such as broadband and mobile phones.

Grade will now have to oppose positions he formerly advocated. In that sense, his move will highlight the fact that everyone - or, at least, most people - can be bought at a price. His arguments will be best taken with a generous pinch of salt.

Money certainly talks and it talks through the mouth of Michael Grade as much as it does through anyone else's.

In this country, RTÉ, funded both by advertisers and licence-fee payers, is not in the position of the BBC in Britain. But if Grade's defection gives British politicians excuses to halt or limit a licence-fee increase, expect the Irish versions to follow suit for RTÉ. They'll invoke tripe about "level playing fields" while simultaneously protecting themselves by cutting public service broadcasting.

They're already doing this to newspapers with their Privacy Bill, of course. Meanwhile, the British (and Irish) public are expected to believe Grade's PR guff. It's worse it's getting.