MEDIA TOP 100- 2007

NUMBER 28: SIMON SHAPS!

Job: director of television, ITV
Age: 50
Industry: broadcasting
Annual programming budget: £1bn
Staff: 48
2006 ranking: 16

With the departure of his boss Charles Allen last year, ITV director of television Simon Shaps becomes the unofficial "survivor" of this year's MediaGuardian 100.

This time last year, our panel was pessimistic about Shaps' chances of survival without Allen. ("He would survive. But only by a day.")

Yet six months after new ITV executive chairman Michael Grade's shock arrival from the BBC, Shaps is still there. More than that, we may even be witnessing the green shoots of ITV's recovery.

Appointed ITV's director of television two years ago, Shaps has surrounded himself with an A-team of talent including controller of entertainment and comedy Paul Jackson, drama chief Laura Mackie and daytime supremo Alison Sharman.

ITV1 is getting talked about again, and this time for the right reasons, with hit dramas including Primeval, Lewis and Bafta-winning Housewife, 49, and breakthrough entertainment shows such as Dancing on Ice, Britain's Got Talent and Harry Hill's TV Burp.

It is even making comedy again, with mixed results. But at least it is trying, which is more than could be said a couple of years ago. Love Island and Celebrity Wrestling, two shows which came to represent all that was wrong with an out of touch ITV, now feel like a long time ago.

"ITV has certainly enjoyed a bit of a revival, but how much is it to do with Shaps and how much is it the arrival of Michael Grade?" asked one of our panellists.

It is too early for much of Grade's influence to have appeared on screen, but he takes a much more hands-on creative role than Allen ever did. Shaps' powerbase is therefore not what it was, and he falls 12 places in this year's list to 28.

One of Grade's most important signings to date was Dawn Airey - recruited after her eight-day cameo at Iostar - as ITV Productions' new director of global content. Tipped for the vacant ITV chief executive role, will she be Shaps' boss next year?

With a budget of around £1bn, Shaps oversees ITV's entire family of channels from ITV1 to ITV4.

In the first six months of the year, ITV1 had a 19.3% share of the audience, down from 20.3% in the same period in 2006.

He started his career as a researcher at Thames TV before rising through the ranks of LWT and then Granada, becoming chief executive of Carlton and Granada's combined production division in 2003.

He might have survived the ITV jungle, but he fared less well at a special edition of The Apprentice at last year's MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival. He was fired by Sir Alan Sugar, who described him as a "hiding behind the bushes kind of fellow".