Media Headliner: What next for ITV following Grade's abdication?

After stepping down as the broadcaster's executive chairman, what legacy has Michael Grade left behind, Alasdair Reid asks.

It was a shame, really, that it had to end on such a sour note. Michael Grade has, for a generation, been one of the media industry's most inspired and charismatic leaders - and even his severest critics (such as Doctor Who fans when he had the temerity to axe the show in the 80s) tend to concede that, by and large, he's been on the side of the angels.

And, yes, there's always been a coterie of the medium's self-appointed (and, according to industry mythology, Oxbridge-educated) intelligentsia who've tended to sneer at Grade for being a 'vulgar vaudevillian' - a more than passing reference to the showbiz family from which he springs.

Mild stuff, really. One thing's for sure - there's been nothing in the past to prepare us for the article published in The Times on 7 March by his former colleague (and rival) Greg Dyke.

Grade's lawyers have prepared defamation writs against both The Times and Dyke. If this matter does get to court, it will provide an ugly, if colourful, end-piece (he was 66 the day after the Dyke article appeared) to a distinguished career.

But perhaps now that Grade has announced he's stepping down from his role as the executive chairman of ITV by the end of this year, he'll find time for calmer reflection. He's bigger than this and has, in the past, taken criticism on the chin.

For those who missed it, Dyke's piece argued (and this, naturally, is the bowdlerised version) that Grade left the BBC in the lurch when, in late 2006, he upped and left his job as the chairman of the BBC Governors to join ITV- and that he was motivated by greed. And then, Dyke's piece continued, it soon became apparent that Grade didn't have a credible big-picture strategy for the future of ITV - and tactical errors compounded this failing.