Lord Sugar thinks that the Great British Bake Off’s move to Channel 4 will be a ‘total disaster’.
The entrepreneur, who returns with season 12 of The Apprentice this week, has said that his loyalty lies with the BBC.
“I think it’s going to be a total disaster,” he told the Radio Times. “Think about their personal credibility as the production company, if this thing bombs on Channel 4.”
The business mogul added: “I mean, the difference between 15 million viewers, right, which Bake Off got, to possibly settling down to about 3 million on Channel 4, surely that’s got to mean something to them, hasn’t it?”
Sugar, whose reality show has been running on the BBC for 12 years, insisted that he would never leave the broadcaster.
“My loyalty is with the BBC,” he said. “The rights owner would need to run it past me, because they’d need to sound out whether I’d go with it, and then would be told no.”
Sugar went on to say that he finds it unfair that the BBC develop successful formats and then have them poached by commercial channels.
He said: “I think they [the BBC] are getting a raw deal these days.
“I mean, because they make something successful like Bake Off or The Voice [which is moving to ITV], then suddenly a commercial channel comes along and just goes and buys it off them, and greedy production companies sell it to them. I don’t find that morally correct.”
Sugar is back on the BBC next week as this year’s batch of business wannabes battle it out in the boardroom for £250,000.
The Apprentice 2016
Speaking at the launch on Tuesday, he said: “There are winners and losers in the process.
“There are real winners and then there are the past people who have won and gone into business and now employ lots of people.
“That’s what I do this for, that’s what we do this for, that’s what the BBC does this for.”
The Apprentice airs at 9pm on BBC One on October 6.
