From the Financial Times:

Grade's route to BBC chairmanship
By Tim Burt, Gautam Malkani and Matthew Garrahan
Published: May 17 2004 15:29

LWT

Director of programmes 1977-81

"Michael was head of entertainment but, as he would have confessed, not a very successful one. All the creative heads of department had potential; none had obvious experience," says Brian Tesler, former managing director and chairman of London Weekend Television, who - controversially - appointed Grade as LWT's director of programmes in 1977.

"[Yet] Michael had skills that went beyond TV. He was an agent, not a producer. But he was a great manager and had a real sense of scheduling."

At LWT Grade oversaw the so-called "Snatch of the Day" to outbid the BBC for live football rights, and won the Prix Italia three years running.

Tesler describes Grade's tenure at LWT, which he left for a US production job at Embassy Television in 1981, as hugely successful, cementing the station's reputation as a forging ground for the industry's senior executives (Greg Dyke, Barry Cox and Sir Christopher Bland are all ex-LWT).

John Birt, who was then overseeing LWT's current affairs and was a friend of Grade's, offers a different view. Writing later, after their fall-out, he slated Grade's "trite and pedestrian" comedies and said he had "not come up the hard way" as a programme maker.

Birt recalls a scheduling meeting. Grade, he writes, cursed his colleagues: "Is that all? We can't make a schedule with that rubbish!"

Though Grade left LWT partly to make more money after the break- up of his first marriage, departing for the US meant he missed out on the fortunes made by several (not least Dyke and Cox) when LWT was bought by Granada.

Another former LWT executive predicts of his BBC chairmanship: "Michael will never go for the lowest common denominator.

He does not want opprobrium."

BBC

Controller of BBC1 1984-86; Director of Programmes 1986-87

"His office was a Piccadilly Circus of performers, agents, sports rights people and producers," says Keith Samuel, head of the BBC publicity department at the time. "He would write a lot of notes to producers and performers about what he had seen overnight on BBC1. Often they were complimentary, but not always. But that sense of being a hands-on impresario was great for morale and people wanted to do their best work for him."

When Grade arrived, BBC1 was being slated for commissioning the slushy mini-series The Thorn Birds and moving Panorama from the schedule to accommodate it, when ITV had just invested in the landmark shows Brideshead Revisited and Jewel In the Crown. Ratings were under pressure.

Grade championed greater rigour in scheduling, increasing audiences for Panorama and Tenko by changing their slots. He commissioned EastEnders, and gave it a key Sunday lunchtime repeat and a two-hour Christmas special, which pulled in 30m viewers. The Wogan Show was designed to lock in early-evening weekday viewers.

The channel also enjoyed prestige drama hits such as The Monocled Mutineer and Tumbledown, but dropped Dr Who and the Miss World contest.

Though considered too young for the post, he applied for the job of director-general in 1987, but lost out to Michael Checkland who subsequently appointed Birt as his deputy. Grade initially welcomed Birt's appointment but later the two clashed and Grade jumped ship to C4. Grade, a harsh critic of the Birtist regime and supporter of Greg Dyke, later extracted revenge in his autobiography. The book includes a description of Birt interviewing graduate trainees ("like watching someone pulling the wings off flies") and a vignette of Birt eating a lobster ("like watching a pathologist in action").

CHANNEL 4

Chief executive 1988-97

For Paul Johnson, the journalist and father of Channel 4's current chairman, it was alleged "pornography". For The Daily Telegraph, it was The Big Breakfast. And for the Independent Television Commission, it was first - surprisingly - Brookside, and later - unsurprisingly - The Word.

Parts of Channel 4's output in the Grade era reliably drew hostile criticism.

Stuart Cosgrove, C4's director of nations and regions who, as head of arts and entertainment, was responsible for the controversial late-night slot, The Red Light Zone, says: "Grade was somebody who had a very real sense of the importance of C4 as a place for innovation. But in the debate about the censorship of Brass Eye, [the cutting-edge Chris Morris series], he was willing to sit down with the commissioners and defend the cuts he had asked for."

Paul Fox, who was then a director of Channel 4, adds: "He held off the ITC when they were getting stuffy, but also programme makers who didn't have to come to Channel 4, so he kept all those balls in the air very skilfully."

Fox also recalls Grade's stand-offs with government over possible privatisation while wrestling the selling of Channel 4 airtime away from ITV. "He ensured that the fight with the politicians to keep it out of the politicians' hands was successful. His skill was doing it privately, not publicly in newspapers. In a channel that was full of leaks, he managed to keep these things quiet."

Cosgrove draws a parallel between Grade's fending off privatisation with his fending off new no-smoking rules: "He was trying to find ways around the rules, so he kept making up new ones. You could smoke after 5.30 or if you were in the presence of a delegation of Cuban filmmakers."

CAMELOT

Chairman Camelot 2002 - 2004

Not long after Camelot won its second Lottery licence, Michael Grade planned a stunt for the company's staff conference, recalls Camelot chief executive Dianne Thompson.

"Michael does a bingo game - it's sort of an after-dinner party trick. Everyone gets a bingo ticket and the trick is everyone playing ends up wanting the same number, so at the end of the game 6,000 people all jumped and shouted 'Bingo!' He could have lost it, but he is such a charmer and has such a great sense of humour that he got away with it."

Grade's love of fine cigars, however, showed a less team-playing streak. In the group's former offices on London's Cockspur Street, smoking was banned. Grade used to smoke his cigars in open defiance of the rule - until he set off the fire alarm. The rest of the building was evacuated. Grade stayed put.

Thompson says: "The next time I was there I had to have the potentially career-limiting conversation with him and ask him to stop smoking. He took it very well."

Thompson says Grade's sense of humour and personable management style was the tonic the company needed when he came on to the board as a non-executive director in February 2000. He succeeded George Russell as chairman in 2002. (Russell was on the board which appointed Grade at C4 and the panel which interviewed him for BBC chair).

As chairman, Grade was credited with lifting morale following a spate of bad publicity over "fat cat" pay and a legal battle with Sir Richard Branson's "People's Lottery".

Though Grade's experience of the leisure sector includes his time at the "family firm", First Leisure, he does not have an unmixed record in the industry: he was a director of the ill-fated Dome venture, the New Millennium Experience Company.

PINEWOOD SHEPPERTON

Chairman 2000 -

Is Michael Grade a consensus chairman or is he ready to bang his fists on the table?

"It's a pleasure having him in meetings. very insightful," is the diplomatic answer of Ivan Dunleavy, chief executive of Pinewood Shepperton.

Comments from colleagues at the film studios and other companies which Grade has chaired suggests he is well aware of the less hands-on role required of a chairman.

Dunleavy says: "Michael's contribution is that whenever he is needed he is available. It's both for strategic advice and now, as a plc, to lead the board. It was clear to me that a considerable amount of growth would come from television, and I could not think of a better person than Michael... He has a superb set of contacts in the media business, not just in television."

Dunleavy, who this month led a stock market listing of the company, says the £62m buy-out of Pinewood and subsequent £35m acquisition of Shepperton required a chairman able to emphasise the television opportunities to be gleaned from the enlarged business.

Together, the two men have set out a five-year expansion plan for the studio, involving a £40m investment in new production facilities, which currently comprise 34 film stages, two TV studios and a media business park.

Dunleavy argues that it is "entirely appropriate" for Grade to retain his chairmanship and stake in the company - diluted from 4.2 per cent to 1.35 per cent following the listing - after becoming chairman of the BBC.

And the BBC chairman sees no conflict in that role and his position with the broadcaster, and has resisted calls to sell his stake or put it in a blind trust. Shares in Pinewood Shepperton rose 11 per cent at the close of its first trading day, leaving Grade's stake valued at £1.2m..