Ian Katz: digital progress best defence against privatisation

Channel 4’s progress on its digital-first Future 4 strategy is one of the most compelling arguments against its privatisation, according to Ian Katz.

The broadcaster achieved 1.25bn All 4 views in 2020, an uplift of 26% compared to the previous year and is up year-on-year by an additional 40% in the first six months of 2021.

Last year, the broadcaster set out a target of doubling its volume of on-demand viewing and growing digital revenue to account for 30% of income within five years and Katz said the broadcaster is “well ahead” in terms of making progress.

The chief content officer said: “The progress made towards achieving this goal is the single best measure of our long-term sustainability. And we are acing it. We’ve grown digital audiences at a rate never seen before.”

Culture minister John Whittingdale has said that the justification for considering a sale of the business is to safeguard its future in the long-term against a backdrop of declining linear audiences.

The broadcaster’s portfolio of channels ended 2020 with a share of 10.1%, up 2% year-on-year, its biggest growth since 2011.

Katz warned that the impact on the indie sector is the “real risk” from a sale and called on producers to make their views on privatisation heard.

He hopes that the government will not “dismiss those who warn that privatisation could seriously damage one of the most successful sectors in the British economy.”

C4’s audience gains and its commitment to return its budget to pre-2019 levels by 2022 sends a “strong message that whatever is going on in the wider debate about privatisation, its very much business as usual.”

“The channel is in good health after coming through the biggest challenge any commercial broadcaster has ever faced,” he added.

Future 4 update

Katz said C4 has “significantly tilted its commissioning approach” to think digital-first since launching Future 4.

“Every commissioning decision starts with a discussion about how a show might perform on All 4 and every recommission conversation looks at its performance on All 4,” he said.

Across every genre, C4 is assessing which shows are over indexing on-demand and doubling down on those.

Katz revealed that factual singles have been performing particularly well, referencing Caroline Flack: Her Life and her Death as one of All 4’s biggest shows.

“That has informed our choices, we have responded by pumping out a search for high impact singles,” Katz said.

In response to calls from producers for more information about what helps shows perform better on-demand, C4 is to provide suppliers with a host data about how they have fared via All 4 including relevant benchmarking information.

“I’m hoping this will be a real kickstarter for producers to understand how to optimise shows for All 4,” Katz added.

As lockdown lifts, C4 will move away from Katz’s pandemic-inspired “joy in a joyless age” with its commissioners looking ahead to the next 12-18 months. “We have to get our heads into the space where we are thinking about what people want as they come out of the tunnel,” he said.

One impact of the pandemic that he is keen to examine is the exodus from cities to the countryside.