Just a brief thought this morning. I must first confess that I don’t really watch a lot of TV, that being said, reading the papers yesterday I was in two minds about Michael Grade’s departure from the BBC and, dare i say, defection to ITV for a cool £8m. My left lobe was thinking that this was good for ITV and programming generally since, recently, the quality of television on ITV has been distinctly lacking. The vacuous ‘personalities’ on ‘I’m a Celebrity Get me Out Of Here‘ are in danger of being taken to court for misleading advertising and don’t even get me started on Emmerdale and Coronation St…it beggars belief that they actually have Soap Awards!?

My right lobe, however, was questioning the reasoning behind this departure. Fortunately, Michael Grade saved my brain from too much ache with this little gem (paraphrased) “of course i didn’t move for the money, we never do a job for the money; we do it because we enjoy it and think we can be successful at it”.

Presumably Michael was using the ‘royal we’.

I like Michael Grade, i think he’s done a lot for BBC and will do a lot for ITV, but to suggest this move wasn’t at least in some part motivated by monetary gain and financial stability is a little much – i very much doubt ITV can straight to the table with £8m as a figure, in fact I’d probably go as far as to suggest there was some sort of upward negotiation involved in the process, cynic that I am.

That being said, i wish him every success, for the sake of ITV and the state of British Television generally.

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