With the BBC's charter renewed and only the level of licence fee to be set, attention in the second half of 2006 has fixed on Channel 4. The question is asked, as it was in the beginning: what is 4 for? The 1980 Broadcasting Act said it was "to encourage innovation and experiment… in the form and content of programmes… to cater for interests that ITV did not… to provide overall a distinctive service." It was also expected to pay its way, and its early programme mix aimed at both goals.
Channel 4 today, approaching its 25th birthday, is riding the crest of a wave. Its audiences are up and growing; its programmes win awards; it invests in new media; it plans expansion into radio. Selling its own advertising now, it triumphantly succeeds at it. Revenues from all activities in 2005 totalled £894m. The core channel alone, C4, took £735m, a surplus over expenditure of £80m. There were losses elsewhere of £30m. Financially, a solid performance, though it is odd that the core public service channel should fund losses in other ventures.
So what is the problem? There are two. First, commercial success on this scale sits oddly with the channel's public service obligations. Does one smother the other? Second, predicting hard times ahead as rivals proliferate, the channel is lobbying to secure public subsidy of as much as £100m a year to underpin its public purpose (it currently receives free broadcasting spectrum in return for its public service obligations). Does it deserve this? Ofcom is reviewing C4's finances, and is bound to consider its remit and positioning. It will report in March 2007.
Two big speeches have recently helped to define the issue. In June, C4's chief executive, Andy Duncan, set out his stall in a vigorous New Statesman lecture: Channel 4 was delivering public value in every media form open to it. Duncan predicted a future in which new technologies will ensure that "'broadcasting' is just one means of content distribution among many; where those quaint old things we call 'programmes' occupy just one shelf in a massive cash-and-carry content warehouse." Really? My guess is that mainstream channels will play a leading role for another decade, and probably far longer. Some content may be fragmented into itsy-bitsy bites delivered via mobiles, but programmes as we know them will remain central. Ofcom encourages delivery to new media, of course. But what will it say to Duncan's plea for support? Channel 4, said Duncan, is "the most cost-effective and productive public institution in the UK," but it will need financial help; Ofcom has "a historic opportunity… to secure Channel 4's future as a public corporation and the key public service competitor to the BBC."
The other memorable speech of the summer was the one given by ITV's departing chief executive, Charles Allen, at the Edinburgh television festival. Ousted from ITV by investor discontents, Allen insisted that its decline could be halted and that ITV would remain a big force in mainstream broadcasting. Speaking "from the departure lounge," he claimed: "We made our savings, doubled our profits and created a unified national broadcaster." Then he turned on Channel 4, the upstart whose revenues rose by more than £40m between 2004 and 2005, whereas ITV has haemorrhaged £500m since 2000. Channel 4, he said, had forgotten its remit, lost its soul, and was far too commercial. Look at the afternoon, he urged: "quiz show, game show, chat show, cartoon, soap." And peak time "dominated by reality, lifestyle, US acquisitions and shock-docs." In requesting public subsidy, he said, "Channel 4 is behaving like a 25 year old still living at home, dipping into mum's purse, even when it's got a fat pay cheque in its back pocket."
Channel 4's bosses reacted angrily, with some justification. There is far too much reality and lifestyle, but Charles Allen's strictures did not do justice to the range of C4's programmes, the strength of current affairs and the quality of home-grown drama and entertainment. And if by US acquisitions Allen meant The West Wing and The Sopranos, some of us will settle for that. On the early evening schedule, though, Allen was right. The three-hour block leading up to Channel 4 News is the epitome of commercial scheduling: Countdown; Deal or No Deal (a money-for-nothing show of the sort that lost the production company Rediffusion its ITV London licence in 1967); Richard and Judy; Paul O'Grady, snatched from a sleeping ITV; The Simpsons; and teenage soap Hollyoaks. All these hold an audience and rake in revenue. They help to pay for the riskier, "quality" programmes the channel screens. But there are not enough of these.
And what of Big Brother? How does that sit with the channel's remit? When Tim Gardam commissioned it from Endemol in 2000, Big Brother was certainly innovative: lock people up together in a house with cameras in every room, and see what happens; invite viewers to vote one out each week. Gardam wanted an observational programme with an interactive element. He got an instant and enormous success, which gave a substantial lift to the channel's ratings and revenues. For some of us it now embodies a mildly prurient voyeurism, but those who stay tuned claim it offers real insights into people's lives. This year's winner, Pete, has Tourette's syndrome; over 13 weeks millions warmed to him.
Others find that observation has given way to manipulation, as the show's producers ratchet up the psychodrama. A psychiatrist thought three of this year's inmates were too vulnerable to be subjected to this prolonged hothouse pressure. Ofcom's content panel stated that it was not within their remit to rule. Seven million viewers, the channel proudly claims, watched the opening episode, and even more (7.7m) were there at the finish. C4 may spend £50m on Big Brother and other Endemol products, more than twice as much as Channel 4 News; but for C4, it's worth it. The producers are already busy dreaming up new twists for next year.
Public service broadcasters used to aim at universality, offering something to all ages and educational levels. But C4's prime marketing concept is the appeal to a 16-34 audience. This has some strange consequences—a series explaining Islam, for example, is entrusted to Peaches Geldof. There's an obsession with adolescent transgression and sex. Gordon Ramsay is hired to make a series called The F Word; Designer Vaginas is followed by The World's Biggest Penis. Earlier this autumn, unless I dreamed it, we were subject to a "wank week."
Andy Duncan, in his speech, tipped his hat to C4's early days, when I was in charge. He praised the new channel's "challenge to authority and orthodoxy; a concern for diversity and difference; youthful cheek." Actually, the channel also offered a quiet seriousness that today has mostly disappeared.
The most important programme we broadcast, though it took a year to get right, was Channel 4 News. Today, presented by Jon Snow and backed by a team of fine journalists, it excels itself. But I miss the arts on C4 (particularly as More4 says it will be more Wife Swap than Wagner) and the intellectual fibre of Opinions and Voices; I also miss a science programme, a book programme, and something regular on Europe.
There is evidence that C4 is aware that the balance needs redressing. A couple of years ago, its current affairs dwindled and Dispatches was cut back from 30 shows a year to ten. Now it's back to 32 and next year 40, and there's Unreported World, up from 12 to 20. Ofcom, assessing public value, will certainly tot that lot up, but I hope they will not confine themselves to news and current affairs. Does the board ever discuss the balance of programmes? Under Ofcom's agreed terms of reference, they'll want to understand how C4's public service broadcasting remit is defined and implemented.
The main thrust of Charles Allen's attack goes to the heart of the issue—if Channel 4 is commercial in practice and attitude, he says, let it be privatised. Seen off forcibly by Michael Grade, privatisation rears its head again. Broadcasting should not be wholly for profit, but a future chancellor could yet be tempted to sell, and put more than £2bn in the treasury's coffers. Ofcom will hardly advocate this, but they should insist that public value is indelibly imprinted on the bulk of the channel's work. That should be the price C4 pays for financial support.
Channel 4 set out to offer an alternative viewing experience, with the arts, current affairs and documentary prominent, and diversity at the heart of its output. Today, commercial ambitions are taking C4 down different paths. Is it still doing enough of what it was established to achieve?
Reithian public service broadcasting—to inform, educate, entertain—has helped to make British radio and television admirable, useful, enjoyable. It is easy to knock it, as a previous C4 chief executive, Michael Jackson, did in 2001, calling it "a paternalistic exercise in adult education… a redundant piece of voodoo." Commenting on this, Andy Duncan said: "He was right… The old Reithian ideal of giving people what's good for them, whether they want it or not, is not only pointless but impossible when there are so many other alternatives." I disagree. What today's mass choice does is remove the element of compulsion. In the old days you could not always avoid what Jackson calls the "paternalistic"; now there's always somewhere else for the audience to escape. ITV may soon want to divest itself of any public service obligations. But why should not the BBC and C4 offer viewers, on their main channels, what they believe will do them good? Jamie Oliver did.
