So ITV’s director of television Simon Shaps has finally been forced to fall on his sword in a similar fashion to the departure of the broadcaster’s commercial director Ian McCulloch last year.
Both had served the broadcaster for significant lengths of time - more than 25 years - and both were expected to find their positions under threat when Michael Grade arrived back at ITV as executive chairman at the beginning of last year. Both were also said to have made their own decisions to move on and to have left the broadcaster on amicable terms, with ITV saying goodbye to McCulloch in May last year.
At around that time, Grade said Shaps was having an impact and that the end of 2008 would be the right time to judge him. And when I interviewed Grade for Media Week TV last September, he said: "I don't think Simon Shaps has ever had anyone to talk to who really understands the creative business. I can talk to the talent for him if he wants me to." But, despite having this new "mentor" to call on, Shaps is departing less than six months later.
In Rupert Howell, Dawn Airey and Shaps’ replacement Peter Fincham (displaying an impressive comeback from his Crowngate difficulties at the BBC last year), Grade has pretty much got his own team in place now. There is no-one else left to blame if the broadcaster’s next tranche of programming efforts don’t find more favour with the viewing public.
