UK government formally abandons plan to sell off public broadcaster Channel 4

The UK’s Conservative government has ditched plans to privatise the country’s commercially funded public broadcaster Channel 4.

Michelle Donelan

In a letter to prime minister Rishi Sunak, the UK’s latest secretary of state for culture, media and sport Michelle Donelan said today the privatisation should not go ahead and there are “better ways to ensure Channel 4’s sustainability.”

“Last year’s consultation on C4’s future ownership model identified risks to the corporation’s long-term sustainability,” Donelan said in the letter, exclusively released this morning by Lewis Goodall of Global’s News Agents podcast.

“The view of my predecessor, and the government of the time, was that selling C4 was the right solution to meet these challenges. However, after reviewing the business case, I have concluded that pursuing a sale at this point is not the right decision and there are better ways to secure C4’s sustainability and that of the UK production sector.”

Instead, a new package of measures is proposed for the channel, which is entirely funded by advertising and was formed by Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s as a destination for the UK indie community’s shows.

The package includes giving the channel greater commercial flexibility to make its own shows and distribute them internationally, which it currently cannot do.

“C4 is commercially funded and the majority of its funding comes from linear TV advertising revenue, which is in long-term decline,” Donelan said. “Unlike other broadcasters, C4 cannot mitigate this decline by making and owning its own content due to its status as a ‘publisher-broadcaster.’

“I intend to legislate to relax the publisher-broadcaster restriction, giving C4 the flexibility to make some of its own content and diversify its revenue more effectively.”

The package also includes a requirement to further increase its investment in the UK’s nations and regions, over and above its previous move to a new headquarters in Leeds with regional hubs in Glasgow and Bristol.

The controversial plan to sell off Channel 4 was originally proposed by Oliver Dowden when he was culture secretary and became a flagship policy of Donelan’s gaffe-prone predecessor Nadine Dorries. Its scrapping has been on the cards since Donelan took office at the end of last year.

Dorries, at various points, said the channel needed to be sold because it was “too dependent upon one stream of income” and was being held back from competing with streaming giants Netflix and Amazon by its model.

In fact, Dorries seemed to confirm to a parliamentary select committee in May that the plan was an act of revenge for Channel 4 News’ apparently left-leaning coverage of Boris Johnson’s government.

She said: “I’m not going to justify a news programme whose new anchor went out shouting obscenities about the Conservative Party. So they didn’t do themselves any favours sometimes on the news programme and I think that is probably as much as I want to say about that.”

This references reports that the programme’s former long-serving anchor Jon Snow was filmed shouting, “Fuck the Tories” at Glastonbury Music Festival.

Dorries at one stage seemed to be labouring under the misapprehension the channel was in receipt of money from taxpayers, when in fact it is funded entirely by its commercial activities.

When trying explain the logic of privatisation to a parliamentary select committee in November 2021, she said: “It’s right that a public service broadcaster, in the rapidly changing digital environment that we’re in at the moment… I think the longevity and the future of that broadcaster should be brought into question and should be, particularly when it’s in receipt of taxpayers’ money. It is our responsibility to evaluate whether taxpayers are receiving value for money and whether that model is sustainable in the future.”

Channel 4 is commercially funded and at the launch of its 2020 report was running at a financial surplus of £74m (US$103m). It is not in receipt of taxpayers’ money or a licence fee. When this was pointed out to Dorries she replied: “And… so, although it’s… yeah… and that.”