Lord Attenborough’s son says he would be ‘turning in his grave’ at Channel 4 sale
Richard Attenborough, the late Oscar-winning director and chair of Channel 4, would be “turning in his grave” to see the broadcaster privatised, his son has claimed.
Michael Attenborough said that Michael Grade – Channel 4’s chief executive from 1988 to 1997, who will monitor the privatisation process as chair of the broadcast regulator, Ofcom – was breaking a promise to his father by supporting the sell-off.
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.
“He used a phrase like ‘the landscape of the media has changed massively and it’s not just as simple as there being the famous four main terrestrial channels’,” Attenborough said. “But that doesn’t really explain anything. He’s of course right – the landscape has massively
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