Fair enough, you may say.
If you're really radical you might say, why don't ITV's advertisers just pay for what they get? Just like they do for a page in a magazine or a newspaper.
Anyway, that's not the way TV works so we're stuck with it. Or are we?
CRR was the bright idea of former ITV boss Charles Allen, who saw it as the price to be paid for combining Granada and Carlton, the last two extant big ITV companies (STV and Ulster remained, and still remain, independent) into ITV plc.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, and maybe it was, but it's costing ITV about £100m a year.
ITV's ratings are falling (although it still does about 40% of the commercial TV audience) and some people, like Channel 4's Andy Barnes, have been quick to remind media agencies that the savings they're making on CRR should be re-invested in Channel 4.
And lots of dingbat media agencies have fallen for this "sales pitch", even though C4's ratings are heading south at a rate of knots.
But this is all complete nonsense.
A few years ago advertising was deemed to be on the way out, as the internet took off and, all of a sudden, we didn't need these purveyors of paid-for time and space.
But now advertising is driving the likes of Google and Yahoo! and it's back in fashion.
But the Google-ites' model is simple. Spend money with us, we'll give you some feedback and then take the money. You might not like it, but it's pretty clean. And you can tell your client what the results were (even if there weren't any).
Strangely, clients seem quite happy with this.
Buying airtime on TV in the UK is still about doing agency deals, based on the agency's share of the market, and then trying (not very hard, in many cases) to line this up with advertisers' objectives.
It's like the stock exchange before the Big Bang, or the old Lloyds of London insurance market.
A case, surely, of the cart before the horse.
So, back to Michael Grade.
Will Ofcom let him off CRR? Probably, although they shouldn't unless he can produce a more equitable system.
What about printing a ratecard saying "an ad in Coronation Street costs this much unless we get a better offer?"
Non-TV media owners do this, why not television companies?
Will those clever chaps at Ofcom introduce some common sense into the market?
Will clever young James Purnell at the DCMS make his views known?
Does Grade, who's never been a fan of ITV sales directors or agencies, really want to preserve this absurd status quo?
Well he does, because it's to ITV's benefit. But he knows it's as daft as the rest of us do.
Will the politicos become involved?
Well, they've got other things on their mind at the moment (like the near collapse of the banking system) but I suspect they'll turn their minds to it in due course.
Grade needs a quick win on this, otherwise some logic might (belatedly) enter the equation -- which would be very bad news for ITV.