ITV Chief Lashes Out at YouTube

AMSTERDAM, September 16:
In a panel at the IBC technology conference in Amsterdam, Michael Grade, the
executive chairman of ITV, labeled YouTube and file-sharing sites like it
“parasites” for feeding off other companies’ content.

"The day that Google
or Joost or any of these people start investing £1 billion a year in U.K.
content is the day I'll start to be worried," Grade is quoted as saying in
the prerecorded interview shown to IBC attendees. "They're all parasites,
they just live off our content is what they do. As long as we can create the
content, the content is the keys to the castle for us going forward."

Grade continued:
"People who keep writing the obituaries for existing broadcasters ignore
one thing—they are people who are in love with technology and
distribution mechanisms—that the history of the modern media age is
littered with casualties of people who believed in technology rather than
content."

—By Mansha Daswani