Will Channel 4’s PSB commitments be watered down for privatization?

What makes Channel 4 brilliant to viewers – and also to advertisers – is its unique output and its brave commissioning. Channel 4 offers programming environments that challenge attitudes and help shape opinions – environments that are hard to find elsewhere.

I worry that, in order to make it attractive to any potential future buyer, the government will water down the public service commitments and we will lose the agenda-setting, culture-shaping programming. We don’t need another mainstream commercial entertainment channel ’that can compete on a global scale’. The ad industry needs differentiated and unique places where we can find those hard-to-reach audiences.

Channel 4 has a bold remit to talk about difficult topics that other commercial broadcasters shun because they are under pressure to make a profit. It can tackle topics from racial inequality to lack of representation of disabled people to hate speech, all because it is free from shareholder pressure and can take editorial risks. That creates interesting media buying opportunities for advertisers that you can’t find in other places.

The channel attracts audiences to TV that you can’t always find in abundance, such as light TV viewers and young people under 35. They don’t watch much linear TV, but Channel 4 is a valuable place to find them because of its youth programming, entertainment shows and dramas, across both the main channel and E4.

Government-owned but funded entirely by advertising, C4 lives by four public service commitments – to champion unheard voices, take creative risks, inspire change in our lives and to stand up for diversity. This creates outstanding and original programming and has a knock-on effect across UK media, raising the bar on innovation and challenging other broadcasters to address the issues it raises.

As an innovator, Channel 4 sets the pace for other stations. It was the first to introduce reality TV with the launch of Big Brother in 2000 which, people forget, was groundbreaking. This fired a starting gun on one of the most popular genres of youth programming, leading directly to ITV’s Love Island. But this kind of innovation is risky and doesn’t always pay off. Only a channel with a remit to innovate hard-wired into its constitution will want to take such risks.

Any business interested in buying Channel 4 will, without doubt, seek to escape much of the channel’s public service remit which will be deemed ‘unprofitable’. To get a decent price for the broadcaster, the government would be forced to water down its distinctiveness and give up the very thing which sets it apart from the crowd.

That would create a more homogenous media landscape. Channel 5 and Sky have public service requirements, but not on the same level as Channel 4.

In an age when every business is trying to find its ’purpose’ beyond simply making money, Channel 4 has purpose written into its DNA. It takes the commitment to promoting regions seriously and has established its new headquarters in Leeds as part of a leveling up agenda. It provides a lifeline for a whole ecosystem of independent production companies.

On the commercial side, Channel 4’s sales operation is great at creating ground-breaking innovations, from showing live cancer surgery during an ad break in a tie-up with Cancer Research UK, to multi-advertiser ad break collaborations featuring disabled talent, or highlighting the unacceptable spread of online abuse. As part of its forthcoming Black to Front initiative, the channel is not only promoting programming featuring black talent both in front and behind the camera, but is also asking advertisers to get behind it with ad breaks featuring black talent, producers and directors.

It can do this because the commitment to diversity is hard-wired into its remit. But once in the hands of a commercial owner with shareholders to service, such initiatives would gradually be whittled away if it can’t be seen to demonstrate an immediate revenue uplift.

Tory politicians have long eyed Channel 4 with a view to privatization and it looks like they will finally get their way. But their reasoning makes no sense. In announcing a consultation on the plans, culture secretary Oliver Dowden claimed that the channel is unable to access capital and invest in technology and programming. But C4’s nearly £1bn in annual advertising revenue provides it with plenty of funds to fulfill its important public service remit. It is this distinctiveness that has enabled the channel to perform well commercially over the last three decades.

Privatization appears to be driven partly by the government’s culture war and its dislike of the station’s fearlessness in holding the government to account (it famously replaced Boris, who pulled out of a climate change debate, with a melting ice sculpture).

Flogging off the channel would do great damage to the UK television industry. It would leave many minority groups without a voice and deprive advertisers of a chance to connect with young, often upmarket and highly diverse audiences.