The freezing of the licence fee for the next six years will result in more repeats, dross reality tv, and mobile uploads in order to "give a ITV a fighting chance to achieve better viewer ratings", Mark Thompson says.
The corporation's director general told BBC One's Andrew Marr show the deal, announced in October, was in line with the coalition's "Big Society" concept. He added "I think we'll be inviting the public to send in their own programmes, too - it's television, made for them, and by them".
It's thought the reduced quality will give ITV the chance to achieve viewer-ratings that are almost in the same league as the BBC's. "We've bullied ITV for too long", he added. "First we fogged them off with Des Lynam, then Adrian Chiles, we were going to offload John Craven, but John revealed he had an infinity-clause in his contract created when he was at Newsround".
Thompson initially refused to answer whether happy-slapping mobile-upload films would be broadcast. But Marr threatened to invite Jeremy Paxman, who could be heard huffing off-camera. It was then Thompson's tone changed, and he started crying like a bullied child being given chinese burns. "YES, OK!" he screamed.
The Andrew Marr show are still unsure to what precisely he was agreeing.
