In March the FT reported that pre-Hutton, Michael Grade was part of a team trying to put together a private equity bid for ITV. [FT ] Now, in the two years before he qualifies for a senior rail card, Grade trades a six figure pay cheque for seven, and coasts into Grays Inn Road on a wave of optimism so strong you imagine some people believe he could be dropped on Brighton beach and – with a cigar wave – stop the tide from coming in. [Guardian]

Grade of course, can’t save ITV. Here’s something I wrote for the Scotsman when the four month job hunt was just beginning in August:

• Programming needs sorting out, says the conventional wisdom. If only ITV1’s share can bounce back then ad revenues will rise and everything will feel so much better. This is ITV’s version of the mousetrap argument: just build a better one. It’s not wholly convincing. 2005 was a disastrous year for ITV1 and 2006 promises to be worse. Creative renewal may preserve existing share – it won’t send the tide back.

• Then there’s the regulatory lifeline. Just get rid of the competition clauses that hit the bottom line – the contract rights renewal rules that were the price for creating a single ITV – and everything will be rosy. But that’s a couple of years negotiating with the Competition Commission and analysts don’t think this will add more than a few million pounds to ITV’s figures.

Charles Allen was tight with Tessa Jowell and that didn’t do ITV much good (although he is now free for the BBC Trust chair!). Maybe Grade is betting on an idea favoured by Peter Fincham, namely that television’s long painful multi-channel defragmentation may have finally ended:

Fincham believes that people will continue to want “mixed genre” channels like BBC1 and BBC2, and indeed ITV1, as far as the eye can see.

“This stuff matters and it’s for the future too and not just the past,” says Fincham, who is convinced his mixed-genre strategy will survive the plan to move all of the UK over to multi-channel digital television by 2012. [Indy]

It’s a comforting thought, but if I were a City investor I’d want to see more for my money than “a period of stability and confidence.” Still, the old showman has provided for a very comfortable retirement. Montecristo anyone?