Grade touted as ITV's saviour after Airey switches allegiance to BSkyB

A new round of musical chairs begins at the top of the television industry today after Channel 5's chief executive, Dawn Airey, surprised pundits by joining Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB.

Channel 5 and ITV, to which Ms Airey was widely tipped to move, will now have to find chief executives. ITV may turn to an unlikely saviour, the former BBC1 controller and Channel 4 chief executive Michael Grade. But Mr Grade, 59, who has been out of broadcasting for five years and is now chief executive of Camelot, has said an approach had not yet been made.

Channel 5's shareholders, United Business Media and RTL, are due to meet Ms Airey today. She is on a rolling one-year contract, which is believed to have nine months still to run.

Ms Airey had been wooed by ITV for months, but was tempted away by a late offer from BSkyB to become its new managing director, responsible for all programming outside sport. Her salary of about £1m will make her one of the most highly paid women in Britain.

A Channel 5 insider said: "The ITV job would have been just like Channel 5, only bigger. Going to Sky is a whole new challenge in a rapidly expanding market. Dawn is ambitious and wants to learn more about the media. What better place to do that than with Murdoch?"

Her decision will be a bitter blow to ITV, still reeling from the £1bn ITV Digital débâcle, and licking its wounds from a hammering in the ratings from the BBC. Ms Airey, 41, was way ahead of other candidates for the ITV job, reflecting the lack of available management talent in British broadcasting. David Wood, deputy editor of Broadcast magazine, said: "Dawn is so much in demand because there is a lack of talented people at that level. She is an extremely capable, enthusiastic and aggressive operator, a cheerleader who is able to rally the troops."

Possible successors at Channel 5 include her deputy, Nick Milligan; the former Channel 4 director of programmes John Willis, now with the US public service network WGBH; and Channel 5's director of programmes, Kevin Lygo. Mr Lygo, who joined from Channel 4, has since moved the channel upmarket with a combination of arts and history programming and smart US drama imports.

Ms Airey will be a tough act to follow. From a standing start five years ago, and on a tiny programme budget, she has conjured up an audience share of 6.5 per cent for Channel 5 (now rebranded simply "Five"), compared with 5.7 per cent last year. She did so, in her own words, with a mixture of "football, films and fucking".

An ex-colleague said: "She's great fun but can be extremely formidable. She always said she could put up with us being arseholes as long as we were good at our jobs. But, if we weren't any good it didn't matter how sweet or good-natured we were, we were out."

Ms Airey failed, though, to find a "break-out" show able to pull in up to 3 million viewers regularly. Her new bosses at BSkyB will hope she has more success at Sky One.