Meet the new council of the media gods — largely from the same career DNA and backgrounds as the old ones. We have a new recruit to the pantheon in Sir Ian Cheshire, a businessman reminted as chairman of Channel 4 as the Government presses ahead with a privatisation plan of the channel.
Not unrelated news is that in the longest running Succession saga since Logan Roy’s needy clan vied for a proper job, Ofcom has found its man in Michael Grade, the affable scion of entertainment TV. Not the former editor of the Daily Mail Paul Dacre, the previous first choice of Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries. No premature objections at my end to Lord Grade, a former Beeb controller who in previous encounters — when he was chief executive at Channel 4 — struck me as a confident presence and a committee man of Tory leanings, with no major axe to grind other than a desire to take on the might of the tech platforms.
