There were two aspects to it. Firstly, there’s Granada as a working environment, and secondly, there’s Granada’s reputation, I suppose, as a television company. Firstly, compared with other companies I’ve worked for, before and since, during my time at Granada, I can own only describe the environment as being friendly and comradely. There was of course, a certain hierarchy, but it seemed to me that this was flattened out a bit, a feeling that we were all in it together, something that’s often lacking in other places. One of the main distinctive things about Granada, I think itself was that it’s raison d’être was that it was in the north, for the north and working on its northern news programme, and I was very much aware of this.
And just as important as this was its development of serious ground-breaking investigative programmes like World in Action. I think Granada, part of its main purpose was to speak truth unto power, I can’t express this in any other way. And perhaps that’s what distinguished it from other networks.
