Ch4 Privatisation

In a letter to the Guardian, Attenborough, who is a theatre director, said: “Perhaps Lord Grade needs reminding of the promise he gave my father, Lord Attenborough, when he was running Channel 4 and my father was its chairman. Namely that he ‘would die in a ditch before he’d see Channel 4 privatised or its public service commitment in any way diminished’.



“My father must be turning in his grave. I only wish he was here to face, expose and oppose him.”



He added: “Grade knows only too well that once profit becomes the prime motive, undertakings about risk, diversity, regional spread, grassroots commissions etc will inevitably be eroded and tragically disappear.”



As chief executive and chair of Channel 4 respectively in the late 1980s, Grade and Attenborough fought off the first attempt by Margaret Thatcher to privatise the channel she herself had greenlit in 1982.



Attenborough said he had written privately to Grade, a Conservative peer, to express his dismay and that while Grade wrote back quickly, he failed to properly explain his change of heart.