Grade takes on challenge of BBC Chairman

Former Channel 4 boss Michael Grade stepped into the office of the BBC Chairman in the corporation's media centre this morning with two issues at the top of his to-do list.

The first is to recommence the selection process for the next Director-General of the BBC; the second is to guide the BBC towards the impending renewal of its royal charter.

The challenge is to accomplish both immediate and herculean tasks within weeks.

The omens are good. Today's papers have been magnanimous in their praise of Mr Grade who has been hailed as the "saviour" of the BBC and commentators are certain that Grade, whose tenure at Channel 4 was not without its critics, is the man for the job in hand.

On his selection for the £80,000-a-year four-day-a-week post of BBC Chairman, Mr Grade's first move was to freeze the Director General selection process. This process, likely to be recommenced quickly, will be a crucial step in reinvigorating day-to-day management of a bruised post-Hutton BBC.

But the appointment of the Director General post will also be crucial as the BBC pulls itself together to respond to the government's Charter Review. The BBC faces assaults on various fronts from commercial rivals who argue that the increasingly populist broadcaster is unfairly funded, over-sized and over-manned.

In light of the top-level management clearout following the wake of the Hutton Report, the BBC has won an extension to the response to the Charter Review process, but this breathing space will be slight and the response, which is said to be largely complete, must be handed to government in June.

Grade is viewed, perhaps not so much as a maverick, but certainly as an independent - a reputation born in no small part to his resignation from the BBC in 1988 following a disagreement with then BBC Director General John Birt (now Labour peer Lord Birt).

However, it is understood that he will be seeking candidates with experience of the broadcasting and journalism industries for the BBC's Board of Governors, and three of these posts are expected to be filled shortly. The role of the Governors, saddled with the twin responsibilities as champions and regulators, has been widely criticised with respect to the Hutton inquiry.

Mr Grade is thought likely to widen the gap between the Governors and the management of the BBC in an effort to accommodate these uneasy bedfellows.

While Michael Grade's immediate concern will be appointing the next Director General, the greater test will be the 2006 Charter Review - which arrives half-way through his four-year tenure.

(SP)