C4 Chairman, Sir Michael Bishop, has accused ITV of blatantly underselling C4 airtime between 1989 and 1992, as it became clear that C4 would be selling its own space from 1993. He questions the difficulty ITV appeared to have selling C4 airtime, considering the fact the channel was achieving nearly 20% share of viewing on commercial terrestrial TV. During the period ITV were only paying C4 the 14% minimum requirement with regard to advertising revenue.
Since taking over the sale of its own airtime C4 revenue has risen from £20.66m to £26.48m (Jan – Apr), which during April represented 17.7% of the combined ITV/C4 revenue.
In terms of share of viewing C4 has achieved an average share of 21.98% of the combined ITV/C4 hours of viewing – a 2.11% point increase on the average across he whole 1992 (19.87%).
