John Whittingdale hints at Channel 4 future

John Whittingdale has hinted that a purchaser of Channel 4 would get the greenlight to introduce in-house production, but could face new commissioning quotas, for example around spend with smaller indies. 

As part of a wide-ranging session about the future of the broadcaster at the Edinburgh TV Festival, the culture minister acknowledged that privatisation would likely spell the end of C4’s publisher-broadcaster model, under which every single C4 show must be produced by a third-party.

He said: “If C4 were acquired by an owner that did have an in-house production facility, then obviously, they will be able to use it. But there will still be the remit, which will require [the new owner] to place a proportion of its commissioning outside of that in-house production facility, and  possibly with smaller indies - certainly with those outside London, possibly those in the other nations of the UK. All of those things can be addressed.”

Potential buyers including Comcast, Discovery, ITV and ViacomCBS all have varying degrees of in-house production capability.

Whittingdale continued: “There is a case for looking at the remit and restoring it to its original purpose, which was to support and build up start-ups and small indies. There are some production companies that are bigger than C4 and no longer need its support.”

According to Broadcast’s 2020 Indie Survey, C4’s top suppliers were Sky-owned Love Productions, ITN and All3Media indies Lime Pictures and Studio Lambert.

The culture minister went on to claim that C4 has made “significant” cuts to the budget for C4 News, which is produced by ITN, positing that a new owner might be asked to up its spend in this area. 

“It’s not a question of preserving [spend on news] but the potential of an alternative owner with deeper pockets being able to invest more in it,” he said. “That is something that would be part of any potential contract drawn up.”

That was one of many references to the notion that C4’s remit would be maintained and in some cases reimagined in the event of a sale.  

”We’re going to make it clear that if there is a change of ownership, the remit will stay. Unless they [the buyer] is willing to accept that, I assume they wouldn’t have expressed an interest in the channel,” he said.

Indie pressure

Whittingdale was put under pressure from a crop of industry bigwigs who argued against the sale, with moderator Krishnan Guru-Murthy flagging the level of support for Broadcast’s Not4Sale campaign.

The MP sought to play down fears that the rights position of indies would be eroded by privatisation.

“What has supported the indie sector is the terms of trade,” he said. “And we have no intention of trying to change those.”

The culture minister spent much of the session raising questions over C4’s long-term sustainability, making the case that the streamers are driving down broadcasters’ share of viewing at the same time as the TV ad market is indecline.

He highlighted the forthcoming restriction on advertising junk food before 9pm and the possibiliity that the goverment also cracks down on ads for gambling services. C4, which is reliant on advertisers for the vast majority of its income, “is going to find it harder and harder to survive,” he said. 

However Victoria Day, managing director of ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, rebuffed the claims. She said the TV ad market remains healthy and is an “appealing prospect” for the brands she represents.

C4’s younger and diverse audience make it “a very attractive brand for advertisers to be associated with,” Day added. “I’ve never heard a single client say that they want another commercial channel showing more of the same programming.”

She added C4’s “nurturing” of the creative sector has fostered a talent pool from which advertising agencies can pull from.

Elsewhere in the session, Voltage TV’s managing director Sanjay Singhal suggested Whittingdale has a long-held ideological “agenda” to privatise C4.

“25 years ago you said that the fact C4 was making so much money meant it should be privatised. Now you say it isn’t successful enough.

“It seems to me you’ve got your answer and are retrofitting it to the question you are trying to solve - it doesn’t really matter what C4 does.”