The future of the Football League chief executive David Burns will be decided at a meeting between the organisation's executive board and its chairman Keith Harris as criticism increased over the four-year television deal he negotiated with BSkyB.

At a meeting of Division One club chairmen in central London yesterday it was decided that the board and Harris should rule on Burns's fate following claims from some clubs that he acted in an unauthorised way when he approved the £90 million television deal.

Burns expressed confidence that he would survive, and defended the deal, saying: "It is an exceptional contract with Sky and it gives some level of financial security."

In a separate development, Delia Smith led the Football League demands for an audience with television giants Carlton and Granada yesterday as part of a protest march against the collapse of ITV Digital.

The Norwich City owner picked up a placard and joined a picket line along with representatives of six other clubs outside the Knightsbridge offices of Carlton, to call for the head of the company to meet with the Football League.

The 72 clubs in the League have launched a battle in the High Court in London with both media giants - parent companies to the failed digital channel - to recoup the £178.5 million owed to them following the collapse of a three-year television rights deal.

The first division chairmen have received details of a report by accountants KPMG into how their competition can be restructured and rebranded to make it commercially viable. Among the recommendations are that all commercial negotiations for the first division be taken out of the hands of club chairmen and handed over to a commercial board made up of business people appointed by football clubs.

Scotland's Premier League clubs are set to agree a television deal with the BBC which will earn the 12 leading clubs around £24 million over the next two years. Both the Old Firm of Celtic and Rangers and the rest of the SPL clubs, with whom they fell out, have agreed to the proposal of the SPL chairman Lex Gold and the executive over the re-structuring of the voting system and TV revenue.