Timing – in life in general, not just broadcasting – is everything.
Take Channel 5/Five/five, for example. It launched on 30 March 1997. OnDigital, the UK’s first version of free-to-air digital terrestrial television, launched on 15 November 1998. If OnDigital had come first there would be no Channel 5, as OnDigital would have used UHF channels 35 and 37 to broadcast a robust signal across 70% of the UK.
Instead, six lower-powered multiplexes were mingled in with the existing analogue frequencies. There’s a lot of science at play here, but suffice it to say that Channel 5’s birth meant the death of a sensible, stable and robust DTT platform.
How, then, to attract people to the new DTT platform and away from the boring old, and slightly wasteful, analogue platform? Content! Yes, you could waffle on about higher bitrates and suchlike but what people want is content.
And so lots of new channels were announced. BBC Three, BBC Four, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4… All were called something else at launch but are now staples of the multi-channel world in which we live.
Mission confusion
Channel 4 was no exception. Film 4 launched in 1998, followed by E4 (2001), More4 (2005) and 4seven (2012).
Even Channel 5 got its act together after several ownership changes, giving us 5select, 5star and 5USA (again, after several rebrands).
The problem then was the dilution of the reasons for being of the original parent channels. In particular, Channel 4’s remit to provide high-quality, distinctive programming was being nibbled away by the need to provide programming that attracted advertising revenue that could be shared across several channels. The remits for the four BBC and ITV channels are fairly clear in comparison.
Phil Redmond made an argument in The Guardian that merging Channel 4 with the BBC and selling off its unused frequencies and programme guide positions would be a way forward.
I disagree.
For one thing this ignores the commercial facts; Channel 4 is more than just that channel, there’s also all the other channels and the ownership of The Box Network (purveyors of 4music, Kerrang! and a host of other channels I don’t watch) and of Film4 Productions. It’s not as simple as 1982.
The Great Leap Forward
It would be closer to describe Channel 4 as the equivalent of BBC Studios, which owns (was gifted) the BBC’s production facilities and then merged with BBC Worldwide. It now owns seven UKTV channels outright (Yesterday, Dave, Drama, Gold, W, Eden and Alibi), the other three being sold to Discovery in 2019.
Now: if someone decided that BBC Studios should ‘buy’ Channel Four Television Corporation from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport… that makes a bit more sense. And, as Redmond points out, it saves going through the whole sale process. Channels 4’s Welsh language near-equivalent, S4C, will be fully funded by the BBC (via the licence fee) from 2022, so one could argue that the consolidation has already started.
Did you know you can watch S4C via the BBC’s iPlayer? You do now. That’s how I’ll be watching the Cymru v Danmarc game tomorrow… anything to avoid Robbie Savage.
Channel 4 is a publisher-producer, which means it doesn’t own any of the programmes to shows (though it does have a stake in some of the films). But it still has the rights to show them. So here’s a suggestion.
CFTC joins UKTV (another publisher-producer, as well as showing the archive content) in the BBC Studios stable. 4seven is closed. The major properties get repeats on More4, the minor ones get repeats on the closest UKTV channel.
Close E4; BBC Three does the job much better. All those repeats of The Big Bang Theory and Scrubs can go to one of the UKTV channels. This also allows BBC Three to take over the E4 slots on Freeview. Of course, one could argue that BBC Three should be renamed E4; then it could take adverts, once out of the BBC-branded stable.
Close the timeshift (+1) channels. Put the money saved on transmission costs into beefing up All4 as a catch-up service (apart from the adverts it is already quite good though) and into the main channel.
And that’s the important part. Channel 4 shouldn’t be seen an extension of the BBC, it should still remain different and independent. It should still take its news service from ITN, it should still be willing to go to those places that the BBC won’t – or can’t go.
The future?
If anything, the BBC is becoming more like Channel 4 in commissioning programmes from places other than BBC Studios (though not necessarily through choice). What we think of as “the BBC” is an independent newsgathering organisation, six linear TV channels, a hatful of radio channels, even more local news operations and several brands (BBC Three, Radio 1 Dance). It owns some formats and old content but not everything.
What does that mean for ITV and Channel 5? Well… not too much (not at the moment, anyway). ITV is on a sound financial footing; despite being an advertising-funded public service broadcaster it still has a back catalogue going back to the mid-1950s it can exploit, plus the big football competitions and Love Island. Channel 5 is now owned by ViacomCBS which puts it in the same stable as Paramount, Smithsonian and MTV and some co-owned products such as CBS, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.
Competitions and Mergers? Well… I don’t know. One Government-backed public service provider taking over another. It could make it harder for shows such as the Great British Bake-Off to move from the BBC to Channel 4. There would be governance issues; while it might seem counter-productive for both to bid for a programme or format it would help show true independence. But the combined broadcaster wouldn’t siphon off advertising, nor break the independents market.
Ultimately the wider question is around the public service obligation. We knew what it mean when we got the British Broadcasting Company, 99 years ago. We had a fair idea of what it meant 39 years ago when we got C4 and S4C. What will it mean for the next 30 or 50 years? Perhaps… perhaps we should ask people. What they want from their television screens and how they would want to pay for it.
We may discover that we’re so homogenised that we don’t need Channel 4 to be diverse, distinctive and different at all.
PS. If you’re wondering about the title of this thought.