There's an old tradition in the UK Press known as juxtaposition, where a couple of apparently unrelated stories are co-located on purpose. Sometimes this when it is not possible to draw a direct link between them for various sometimes legal reasons. So today's Sunday Times article about Michael Grade with what appears to be cloven feet seems particularly intriguing. Doesn't it seem strange that News Corporation (who own the Sunday Times, Sky television and have just taken a 17.9% shareholding in ITV) now print the page as my photo illustrates.
Grade was chairman of BBC until a few days ago and has now jumped
In the ancient television days of a few years ago, when there were really still four receivable terrestrial channels and less than 200 satellite, there was still a reasonable, (some would say world leading) selection of television programes from the UK and it was moderately evenly balanced between the old ITV and BBC.
Then after reality and cheap television like Love Island, Viewer of the Year, I'm a celebrity (D-lister), get me out of here, Soapstar Superstar and so forth, it may take some effort to de-mush the ITV schedules. The new (still secret?) ITV show "Fortune" with ex convict Jeffrey Archer alongside sex-shop Ann Summer's founder Jacqueline Gold handing out money to make peoples' wishes come true seems to be from the same genre. ("Jim'll fix it" with a convict and a sex shop owner?)
In fairness, Corrie (not on my personal viewing list) does seem to have a sense of humour and a heart and there have been some strong dramas although a fair few are about flawed detectives. Of course, Grade knows the entire BBC plans for 2007 and beyond anyway, so this should help his turnaround of ITV's programming.
Tag: rashbre, ITV, Michael Grade, Sunday Times, BSkyB, News International
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