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David Glencross was a leading figure in the regulation of Independent Television during the 1980's.
Without him, first as deputy-director general of the IBA and then chief executive of the new
Independent Television Commission, ITV and Channel 4 might have been more grievously damaged by
the broadcasting legistlation of the late years of the Thatcher Government than they were.

Born in Salford in 1936 David Glencross went to Salford Grammar School and then to Trinity College,
Cambridge. In 1958 he joined the BBC as a general trainee, one of a select cadre of half a dozen
entrants a year who were destined for senior roles in the corporation

Trainees were sent to learn the business in various parts of the organisation. Glencross started at
BBC Biirmingham, where he produced radio talk shows and then did a stint on Midlands at Six, the
regional TV news. By 1964 , after a brief attachment as a producer at Lime Grove on the political
series Gallery, he seemed settled as a senior producer with the cosmopolitan intellectual milieu of
Bush House, home of the BBC's External Services. An enthusiastic cricketer, he became a
"Bushman", a member of the team founded by Hugh Carlton Greene during the war. Bushmen also
maintain an informal dining club, membership of which he enjoyed for the rest of his life.

Many were surprised when, in 1968, Glencross moved to the Independent Television Authority, ITV's
regulator. In this new role he brought his understanding of programme-making to the business of
applying broadcasting regulation without diminishing creative initiative. He also brought intellectual
rigor and good humour to the role, and he rose quickly from senior programme officer to deputy -
director of television. With another exBBC man, Colin Shaw, the director of television, Glencross
helped oversee the ITV "contract round" of 1980 and the birth of Channel 4, which came on air two
years later. He himself took over as director in 1983.

Glencross was an enlightened regulator who often took as liberal a line as was possible within the
broadcasting legislation, but his interpetation of the rules was never soft. He was always rigorous,
even when making difficult judgements on the telephone under pressure of time. These conversations
frequently had, as one contractor put it, "more pauses than a Pinter Play", while Glencross thought
through the matter in hand.

He was not afraid to resist decisions by the Independent Broadcasting Authority members which he
believed to be ill-considered, as he did in the case of the This Week programme about the Amnesty

Internation revelations of torture of suspects in Norther Ireland by members of the RUC. Much later he
was involved in ensuring that Death on the Rock survived government pressure to keep it off the air,

Glencross's firm but fair approach to regulation was appreciated by many outside broadcasting, and
he was much sought after to take part in official negotiations between politicians and broadcasters. At
the public meeting of the Peacock committee in Church House, Glencross was the only speaker to be
applauded. This was when he told the committee that the issue it needed most to address was
whether broadcasting was to be treated simply as a commodity or as a national service, with social
oblgations to stimulate as well as to gratify. The applause was because he had defined in clear terms
the threat that faced public service broadcasting.

To Glencross broadcasting always had a moral dimension, a need to be of use to its audience in the
broadest sense and to be responsible and trustworthy. As a lifelong practising Christian, he brought
the values of his faith to his work and indeed to his life as a whole. In private life as well as work,
Glencross was a good and generous friend to many. His warmth and gentle humour brought him
friendships that crossed boundaries of race, class and creed. A fluent French-speaker, he made many
friends across Europe on holiday and when representing the UK independent broadcasters at the
European Broadcasting Union in Geneva,

Having, as chief executive of the newly named Independent Television Commission, overseen the
stabilising of ITV after implementation of the Broadcasting Act 1990, Glencross retred at 60. He
accepted chairmanship of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a group on which broadcasters met
the leading charities to decide how the increasingly massive charitable giving in resonse to the
showing of famine, earthquake and other disasters on television should be handled. Glencross was in
the chair for the tsunami in 2004 and the eathquake in the mountains of Parkistan in 2005, among
other events. Once again his fairness and good humour were highly valued in dealing with the
inevitable tensions between broadcasters and the charities.

He was also a trustee of the Sandford St Martin Trust, a charity set up to encourage broadcasters and
programme-makers to produce programmes of quality and originality. He was appointed CBE in 1994.

In private he applied his love of music and talent for the piano to learning to play the organ for the
church he and his family attended in Winchmore Hill. He became a member of the MCC, though the
demands on his time prevented him from watching cricket as much as he would have liked.

His wife Elizabeth (Lizzie), and daughter survive him.