Three Is The Magic Number

So Michael Grade doesn’t think that ITV should be providing regional news at all? ITV has no divine right to that 3 button on every remote control in the land. Just how many people watch television on the Internet compared to the number of people who watch television on the television? Just which digital channel has anything remotely approaching ITV’s viewing figures? And has no one noticed how massively dependent on terrestrial television is digital television for its content? Yet this immensely privileged commercial network expects public money to provide such basics as regional news, and children's programmes.

It is very high time to re-regionalise ITV under a combination of municipal and mutual ownership, and to apply that same model (but with central government replacing local government, subject to very strict parliamentary scrutiny) to Channel Four.

I say again, there is no divine right to that 3 button. Nor, come to that, to the 4 button or the 5 button.