Sir Christopher Bland passionately defended public service broadcasting in a BBC1 debate over the broadcasting bill of 1989, which I produced. As chairman of London Weekend Television, he was campaigning against the planned auctioning of ITV franchises to the highest bidder, with few quality thresholds or public service obligations.
What I really admired about him was his breadth of vision, his awareness that diluting ITV output would have a knock-on effect on the BBC, and that the whole delicate ecology of broadcasting would be undermined. He almost pleaded with me to get BBC people into the programme, saying: “Can’t they see that this fight is their fight too?”
