Culture minister claims private owner would help broadcaster to ‘thrive’

The consultation into selling Channel 4 is about securing its “long-term future” amid a decline in audience share, according to John Whittingdale.

john Whittingdale

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (23 June) the culture minister said that the review into the PSB’s ownership model is being driven by ensuring that it is able to “thrive” for years to come in a fast-changing environment.

“There is no question that the audience share has been declining right across the PSBs because of the strength of the new entrants,” he said.

“The way in which [C4] continues to succeed is by having the capital to make sure that it can go on making great programming. This is about the longer term - not about the performance over the last year, or indeed the coming year.”

He acknowledged that the broadcaster has had a “good year in challenging conditions”, following yesterday’s annual results in which it revealed its revenues fell just 5% year-on-year to £934m despite the implications of the pandemic. It is on track to generate a record £1bn this year.

However, Whittingdale raised concerns about the level of its dependence on advertising revenue, which he said is “inevitably” going to decline along with audiences and suggested a private owner would be in a position to invest more heavily.

“Advertising revenue depends upon it continuing to have a significant audience share and to do that will require investment if C4 is to survive against competition from the likes of Netflix and Amazon, Sky and Disney, all of whom are able to spend hugely more on content.”

“We think it’s appropriate to see whether or not C4 wouldn’t thrive better if it was able to access the kinds of investment capital which others are able to put into high-quality content.”

He highlighted the impact of ViacomCBS acquisition of Channel 5 from Northern & Shell.

“We have seen with C5 that money has been invested in programming and share has risen - and that is the benefit of having a financially stable owner,” he said.

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