Media Brief

I'm the BBC's media correspondent and this is my brief selection of what's going on.

Sir David Attenborough and Mark Thompson have both said that the strict rules over the impartiality of TV news could be relaxed now there are so many channels. The Telegraph reports that on the Andrew Marr Show, Sir David said "I think that the multiplicity of channels makes a quite totally fundamental difference to the sort of television I went into, which was a monopoly".

The Guardian reports Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, told a Whitehall seminar that UK broadcasters should be free to launch an equivalent to Fox News, provided the BBC and other major news broadcasters maintained their impartiality. He said existing rules to guarantee impartiality in television were becoming outdated in the era of the internet.

The Daily Telegraph says speculation is mounting that the coalition is set to give a knighthood to Simon Cowell, the pop impresario behind the X-Factor, beating Bruce Forsyth, the veteran Strictly host, to the prize.

The political journalist and commentator Anthony Howard has died reports the BBC.

The BBC also reports that BBC correspondent Brian Hanrahan has died at the age of 61 after a short battle with cancer.

Grand National winner Tony McCoy has become the first jockey to be voted the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. The Guardian says he has been the champion jump jockey 15 times and won in a landslide, polling 41% of the votes from 293,152 telephone calls.

The Daily Telegraph TV critic Michael Hogan says "the best women won" on The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing. Stella English and Kara Tointon are both East End girls.

The Observer says BBC1 was on course for one of the biggest viewing weekends for 20 years as snowbound families gathered for the finals of Strictly Come Dancing and The Apprentice. It says academics are developing more sophisticated theories about the choices viewers make and they are as important to how people feel about themselves as their clothes or music.

X Factor winner Matt Cardle has scored this year's Christmas number one with his debut single, When We Collide. The BBC reports Mr Cardle sold 439,000 copies to see off competition from a number of Facebook-led campaigns.

The BBC's newspaper review says the continuing fallout from the snow fills the front pages yet again. "Grounded" is the headline on the front of the Independent next to a picture of a barely-visible British Airways plane stuck at a wintry Heathrow airport. The Berlin correspondent of the Times accuses the airport's managers of "bringing Britain into disrepute".

Links in full

• Telegraph | Television news should no longer be impartial, Sir David Attenborough says
• Guardian | Britain needs a channel like Fox News
• Telegraph | Knighthoods: Will Simon Cowell triumph where Bruce Forsyth fails?
• BBC | Political commentator Anthony Howard dies
• BBC | BBC correspondent Brian Hanrahan dies at 61
• Guardian | Tony McCoy wins BBC Sports Personality of the Year award
• Michael Hogan | Telegraph | The Apprentice 2010 Final, BBC One: review
• Observer | The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing finals to deliver record BBC1 audiences
• BBC | X Factor's Matt Cardle grabs UK Christmas number one
• BBC | Newspaper review

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