Ofcom Appoints Former BBC Exec Michael Grade as Chair

After a two-year search, U.Ok. media regulator Ofcom has lastly discovered a brand new chair in Lord Michael Grade.

He’ll take over from former chair Terry Burns, who stepped down in 2020.

The choice to nominate Grade was taken by tradition secretary Nadine Dorries. Grade will nonetheless need to bear a pre-appointment listening to in entrance of members of parliament though that is more likely to be only a formality.

The TV veteran’s profession spans seven a long time and the highest job at three of the U.Ok.’s greatest broadcasters. He has held posts as managing director and chairman of the BBC, government chairman of ITV and chief government of Channel 4.

Controversially, Grade can also be a Conservative peer within the Home of Lords who is alleged to assist the privatization of Channel 4 (regardless of having beforehand campaigned towards it when he labored there) and has been vocal in assist of freezing the BBC licence payment.

“Should you watch the BBC information you’re seeing so many heart-rending tales of the expansion of meals banks, poverty and deprivation – folks having to decide whether or not they ‘warmth or eat’, to make use of the sound chunk,” he lately advised The Every day Telegraph. “And the opposite a part of the wheel is saying ‘We would like more cash’. They stay in a dream world. They need to have been saying: ‘We’re on a glide path to cut back the licence payment to have any likelihood of sustaining assist.’”

Beforehand, The Every day Mail tabloid editor Paul Dacre was thought of for the position, with many believing the method had even been revisioned to offer Dacre the absolute best likelihood of success. Regardless of this, Dacre was not appointed.

The 2-year seek for a brand new chair of Ocom has been dubbed by the Guardian “one of many extra controversial and drawn-out authorities recruitment processes in current British political historical past.”