Grade comes out fighting

It was interesting listening to a rather bullish Michael Grade being interviewed on the Today programme minutes after ITV announced a 41% drop in pre tax profits,cutbacks in programming budgets and savings which will include 600 jobs being lost.

It is difficult to pin much of the blame on Grade who has been in the job less than two years and inherited an organisation which for whatever reason had lagged behind its competitors in the changing broadcasting environment.

That Grade acknowledged that was good to see as was his determination to build up the corporation back to the brand it was when it enjoyed a near monopoly position in commercial broadcasting.

Those days will never return but nevertheless Grade still sees content and image as the way forward and I would applaud him for that.

It is unfortunate that his plans for the network have coincided with the drop in advertising revenues and as a consequence,costs have to be brought in line with revenues.