Michael Grade too lazy and old to lead Ofcom, says BBC official historian

theguardian.com:

The new head of the broadcast watchdog, Michael Grade, is too old, too lazy, and has too many conflicts of interest to lead Ofcom, the BBC’s official historian has said.

Prof Jean Seaton told the Hay festival that Grade’s appointment was a “way of bullying” the broadcaster. The Conservative peer, 79, was confirmed as the Ofcom chair in April after impressing MPs with his “character and gravitas” despite concerns over a “clear lack of depth” of knowledge about social media and online safety.

Grade recently said the BBC was right to hold the government to account but criticised its approach to reporting the Partygate scandal as “gleeful and disrespectful”.

Seaton, speaking as part of a Hay festival panel on the future of the BBC, said the broadcaster has been under “an enormous bullying attack” through the public appointments process for Ofcom, the BBC chair and its board, where there “clearly is an agenda” from a government with “no appetite for listening to alternative views”.

She said: “The appointment of Michael Grade – in his time a very interesting producer, really innovative – he’s too old to be chair of Ofcom, too lazy to be chair of Ofcom. [There are] conflicts of interest because he has said things against the BBC … but he is in a job which takes enormous detailed, grunt-like application to legal affairs. He was an inappropriate candidate.”

Grade has said he would resign the Conservative whip in the House of Lords and become a crossbench peer.

Seaton said any government “with strategic sense” would look to increase the BBC’s funding rather than threaten to remove the licence fee, in order to harness its emphasis on impartiality and objectivity and tackle disinformation, conspiracy theories and declining trust in the