Educating Archie

New ITV chairman Archie Norman shares his thoughts with The Telegraph - and he's shaping up to be harder on the BBC than Michael Grade. He was asked about the strategy review - even if £600m was being "saved" to be reinvested, didn't that show that Mark Thompson had understood the need for the BBC to clip its own wings ?

“As a presentational manoeuvre it was very impressive. If it is true, as they assert, that they can save £600m from cutting back peripheral activities that they believe have no great value like Asian radio, then the question you have to ask is why they need £600m in the licence fee in the first place and why the licence fee is going up 2.5pc this year ?

“£600m is a phenomenal amount of money. It is 70pc of the total ITV programming budget. People are entitled to ask how on earth the BBC managed to spend that amount of money on things they no longer value.

“I think there is a real question which must be in the forefront of Mark Thompson’s and Michael Lyons’ minds and that is an incoming government — at a time when the country is likely to enter a period of austerity and cut back public services — is bound to ask what contribution the BBC is going to make to the cut-backs ?”