Television has become more “exploitative and cruel”, according to Michael Grade, the chair of the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom.
“The exploitation dial has been switched up more and more for ratings,” said the peer and former chair of the BBC board. “It makes me mad. I really don’t like it or enjoy it.
“Television has also become patronising in the sense of: ‘This will do for the audience.’ No mind at work behind it. No real craft thrown in. Just bread and circuses.”
In an interview to be broadcast on Boom Radio on 21 April, Lord Grade expresses concern that the public are increasingly being used as performers to entertain viewers.
Although he does not cite individual programmes, reality shows such as The Traitors, Love Island and Big Brother have attracted huge audiences and dominated terrestrial TV ratings in recent years.
“In the old days, professional entertainers used to entertain the public,” said Grade, who was the controller of BBC One in the mid-1980s, the chief executive of Channel 4 from 1988 to 1997 and the chair of ITV in the late 00s. “Now the public are entertaining themselves.”
The 81-year-old was made a Conservative peer in 2011 but is now a crossbencher after his appointment as Ofcom chair in 2022.
The regulator has come under increased pressure to investigate TV and radio broadcasts featuring MPs, particularly on GB News, which often employs Conservative MPs on its programmes, including Jacob Rees-Mogg and former deputy party chair Lee Anderson, now of Reform UK.
In the Boom Radio interview, Grade is pressed by presenter Jo Brand about the high number of complaints relating to GB News, but says he cannot comment as these are currently being investigated.
“However, we have to weigh up freedom of expression and the public’s right to know along with the need for balance and impartiality,” he said. “We also don’t want our broadcasters being owned and run for political reasons.”
Grade also laments the shrinking pots of money for traditional British broadcasters. He has previously argued that the BBC licence fee, which is now £169.50 a year, is “too high”, and in an interview with the Financial Times last year he described it as a “regressive tax” that meant he would pay no more than a “single mum with three kids in a rented room”.
He also said programmes had become very expensive to make.
“The big question mark is whether the money is going to be around to keep investing in the programmes which are only made for the British audience and probably don’t have international appeal,” he said. “They remain an important part of what we expect on television these days.”
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He cited Mr Bates vs the Post Office, the recent ITV dramatisation of the Horizon IT scandal as an example.
“These programmes, however, are very expensive to make these days. Costs are going up all the time … The Crown allegedly cost Netflix $10m for each hour’s episode. But $10m ought to produce 13 hours of drama for us.”
While chief executive of Channel 4, Grade was described as “pornographer-in-chief” by Daily Mail columnist Paul Johnson. “That will be in my obituaries,” he said. “I don’t care, though I never transmitted anything remotely pornographic.” He did, however, accept that Channel 4 was “the naughty channel – you know, you expected naughty things on it. However, it didn’t hurt the brand. It helped it.”
In 1986, when he was BBC One controller, he faced a row over a sex scene in The Singing Detective, starring Michael Gambon as Philip Marlow
“I spent a whole afternoon looking at the episode, discussing it and, in the end, saying: ‘It is perfectly fine as it is essential to the plot.’ But then all hell broke loose with Mary Whitehouse, the clean-up-TV campaigner, going ballistic. Yet I’ve never transmitted anything on television I could not publicly defend.”