C4 fiasco is just the latest sign of government’s contempt for media
Opinion
A policy no-one in the industry wants, driven by a minister with little understanding of our sector, is just the latest example of how cheaply people in UK government regard media, writes the editor.
Nearly a week has passed since the Government went round telling newspapers that it is going to sell off Channel 4.
Five months have passed since Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries outed herself as having no clue that Channel 4 does not take any public funding. In fact, as C4 CEO Alex Mahon wrote in The Sunday Times yesterday, the broadcaster has never taken a public penny in its now 40 years of existence.
Nine months have passed since the Government began consulting on the future of Channel 4. Despite making a major policy announcement, the Government still has not published the results of this consultation, which is likely because the responses are overwhelmingly in favour of keeping the broadcaster under public ownership.
You only need to look at what the trade bodies that represents advertisers and advertising agencies are saying publicly: it’s a bad idea.
Phil Smith, ISBA’s director general, warned that less commercial broadcasting competition is a danger for advertisers: “[T]here are three TV sales houses – owned by Channel 4, ITV, and Sky – involved in the buying and selling of advertising space. Were these to be consolidated, it would create undue dominance in the TV advertising market and reduce competition. For the market to be effective for both advertisers and consumers there needs to be competition.”
Similarly, IPA boss Paul Bainsfair said: “[C4]’s purpose-driven programming is good for society and it’s good for culture, and crucially, to the IPA, our members and their advertiser clients, it’s good for business. We see no upside but significant downside to privatisation.”
It’s also been more than two years since the last UK general election in which the poor British public were forced to choose between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn as candidates for prime minister. You won’t be surprised that there was nothing about privatising Channel 4 in Johnson’s campaigning or the Conservative Party manifesto.
A cult in search of revenge
This is where we’re at when it comes to government’s relationship with the media in this country. A policy no-one asked for, promoted by people who have little idea of how the industry works, and that has no political mandate.
Of course, all government decisions are essentially political in a democracy where politicians need votes. But it always seems that the Brexit cultists led by Johnson are driven more by revenge than by the need to be popular.
The DCMS select committee Julian Knight, who will support C4 privatisation if it comes down to a vote, freely offered this view and noted the timing of the announcement leak coincided with Channel 4 News being on air. A bit like your boss telling everyone else in the office you’ve been made redundant while you’re in the middle of a big presentation.
Now, elephant in the room time – is this being done for revenge for Channel 4’s biased coverage of the likes of brexit and personal attacks on the PM? The timing of the announcement 7 pm, coinciding with Channel 4 news, was very telling…
— Julian Knight MP (@julianknight15) April 5, 2022
A popularly-elected government (or whatever passes for one in this constitutionally convoluted British system) should not be allowed to make decisions in such a reckless and contemptuous fashion.
Because “contempt” is the only word that I can find to explain the Government’s attitude towards the media industry over the last decade.
I felt a tinge of sadness in 2019 when interviewing the former MP Ed Vaizey (now a Conservative peer), who is the UK’s longest-serving culture minister but was never made Culture Secretary despite an obvious passion and knowledge of the remit.
Despite his obvious antipathy for Johnson, Vaizey admitted he would still accept the Culture job if asked.
“It’s one of the depressing facts of my life that [Culture Secretary] is the job I have always wanted to do in politics,” he said in an interview with me for Campaign. “I read the other day that it’s the job that’s had the most cabinet ministers since 2010. I think there have been seven secretaries of state for culture and none of them have been me.”
A wider contempt for media policy
Whatever you think of Vaizey personally or his politics, is that not the type of person we should want in charge of culture, media and sport policies? Why are we forever subjected to a parade of Dowdens, Hancocks, and Hunts who are given the culture ‘gig’ as a training ground for bigger jobs to come in Cabinet?
The exception to this farce is, of course, John Whittingdale – the modern architect of C4 privatisation. Vaizey noted in 2016, in the heady of days of Theresa May becoming prime minister, that selling off C4 was Whittingdale’s “agenda”.
May had the good sense to scrap privatisation but instead forced the broadcaster to move its HQ to Leeds. The paint was barely dry after renovating the former Majestyk nightclub before Johnson came along to move the goalposts again.
Channel 4 isn’t being treated fairly. The public isn’t being treated fairly. And the advertising and media industries that overwhelmingly don’t want C4 privatisation aren’t being treated fairly either.
As I’ve recently argued, competing with Netflix or Disney+ is not Channel 4’s job, nor is it to become more than a “corner shop” as Lord Grade recently branded it. Its job, as a publicly owned asset, is to offer something the market does not offer – a remit to be “innovative, inspire change, to nurture talent and offer a platform for alternative views”.
A vibrant and competitive marketplace needs to be regulated to guard against monopolies and needs intervention to correct for what economists call market failure. An unfettered free market will not give us a vibrant and dynamic media industry any more than it would give us properly working street lights up and down the country.
But then again, what more should we expect from Johnson, a man who once promised to help his fraudster friend Darius Guppy track down an investigative journalist so some heavies could scare him off with a “couple of black eyes” and a “cracked rib”?
Guppy – who moved to South Africa after being released from prison in the 1990s – later penned a piece in defence of his old friend, in which he said of his plot: “My only regret is that I was never able to finish the job.”
Johnson is only the worst version of a wider plague at the heart of UK government – it does not take the media seriously. A serious government would not leave it to Nadine to wreak revenge on Channel 4 and would treat the views of our industry with more consideration.
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