A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

Channel 4
If the BBC is the most important
part of the public service television
ecology, then Channel 4 is the
next most significant. Channel 4’s
importance has risen as a result of
ITV’s long-term decline as a public
service broadcaster (see
Chapter 6).
Its commitment to innovation and diversity
has complemented the BBC’s universalist
model of public service television and its
appetite for risk-taking has provided a
counterweight to the older broadcaster’s
more cautious and patrician tendencies. We
believe it is vital that the UK retains at least
two broadcasting organisations that are
unambiguously committed to public service,
as the BBC and Channel 4 are. If it were left
just to one, the competition for quality that
exists across the television marketplace
would be much diminished.
Channel 4 was perhaps a strange creation
– unique in its status as a publicly owned
broadcaster funded entirely by advertising
– and yet it has worked extremely well. It
was launched in 1982 by the Conservative
government of Margaret Thatcher but its
roots stretched back to debates that began
in the 1960s. The BBC-ITV duopoly was
failing to reflect the full range of voices of
an increasingly diverse society and made
limited provision for an army of frustrated
programme makers. 165 In its relatively short
history, Channel 4 has succeeded in dealing
with both of these original complaints. It has
done more than any other broadcaster to
reflect the UK’s diversity, and has succeeded
triumphantly as a sponsor of independent
production and UK filmmaking, remaining a
publisher-broadcaster that produces none of
its own content.
In the multichannel age, Channel
4’s idiosyncratic nature and singular
achievements seem more important than
ever. Yet it faces an uncertain future, with
persistent speculation that the government
plans to privatise it, or at least impose some
alteration to its constitutional arrangements.
We oppose any such change as unnecessary
and counterproductive to Channel 4’s role as
a public service broadcaster, but at the same
time do not believe it should be immune to
reform.
Changing times and challenges
It was recognised from an early stage that
Channel 4 had to be a different kind of
broadcaster from the BBC or ITV. The act
of parliament establishing it gave it a remit
specifically to appeal to tastes and interests
not generally catered for by ITV. It was also
required to be educational, to encourage
innovation and experiment in the form and
content of programmes to give the channel
a distinctive character, and to ensure there
were programmes made by independent
producers. All of these requirements referred
to a “suitable proportion of programmes”, a
handily flexible phrase that gave the founding
executive team much scope for pioneering
their own approach. 166 As the Derry-based
independent producer Margo Harkin told
us: “This remit was to be addressed both in
terms of the content of programming and in
165
See for example Maggie Brown, A Licence to Be Different: the Story of Channel 4, London: BFI, 2007, pp. 10-19.
166
Brown, A Licence to Be Different, p. 28.
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