After a two-year search, U.K. media regulator Ofcom has finally found a new chair in Lord Michael Grade.
He will take over from former chair Terry Burns, who stepped down in 2020.
The decision to appoint Grade was taken by culture secretary Nadine Dorries. Grade will still have to undergo a pre-appointment hearing in front of members of parliament although this is likely to be just a formality.
The TV veteran’s career spans seven decades and the top job at three of the U.K.’s biggest broadcasters. He has held posts as managing director and chairman of the BBC, executive chairman of ITV and chief executive of Channel 4.
Controversially, Grade is also a Conservative peer in the House of Lords who is said to support the privatization of Channel 4 (despite having previously campaigned against it when he worked there) and has been vocal in support of freezing the BBC licence fee.
“If you watch the BBC news you’re seeing so many heart-rending stories of the growth of food banks, poverty and deprivation – people having to make a decision whether they ‘heat or eat’, to use the sound bite,” he recently told The Daily Telegraph. “And the other part of the wheel is saying ‘We want more money’. They live in a dream world. They should have been saying: ‘We’re on a glide path to reduce the licence fee to have any chance of sustaining support.’”
Previously, The Daily Mail tabloid editor Paul Dacre was considered for the role, with many believing the process had even been revisioned to give Dacre the best possible chance of success. Despite this, Dacre was not appointed.
The two-year search for a new chair of Ocom has been dubbed by the Guardian “one of the more controversial and drawn-out government recruitment processes in recent British political history.”
