Thread by @NewStatesman

Nadine Dorries has announced that she intends to privatise Channel 4. She wrote on the 4th April that government ownership “is holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon”.
newstatesman.com/politics/media…

Channel 4 is publicly owned, but it receives no public funding – it covers its own costs through advertising and commercial partnerships.

Unless you pay for ad-free streaming on All4 (£3.99 a month), Channel 4 costs you £0 a month – vs £7.99 for Disney+, £13.25 for the BBC’s multiple TV and radio channels (via the licence fee), and £15.99 a month for Netflix’s most expensive plans.

⚫️Channel 4 has a requirement to reach diverse audiences – including young and BAME viewers – not reached by other free-to-air channels, and is also banned under its founding charter from making any of its own programmes.

⚫️Any original content it commissions must be made by independent, private-sector production houses.

As a result, it has invested more than £12bn in the independent production sector, and supports more than 10,000 jobs, works with more small independent companies than its larger rival ITV, and is efficiently run – Channel 4 receives just over £1m in revenue per staffer.

The broadcaster was founded by Margaret Thatcher – partly to show that a public broadcaster could succeed without licence fee revenue, and partly to jump-start private-sector TV production.

There is a reason that leading global TV and movie productions, backed by Amazon, Netflix and the like, come to the UK – and Channel 4 jump-started that world-leading British economic sector.

The channel’s movie arm, Film4, often provided early funding to independent cinema that encouraged commercial investors to come on board. Film4-backed movies now have more than 35 Oscars between them.

🔴Privatising Channel 4, with all of its public service restrictions on output and production, would mean it raised almost no money. Removing those restrictions would harm the independent TV sector that is thriving, and still raise a pittance in government finance terms.

🔴As a result, the private TV production sector doesn’t want a privatised Channel 4. Neither do advertisers, who would find it harder to reach Channel 4’s distinctive audience as a result, and who would dislike less competition in the market.

🔴Privatising Channel 4 would, therefore, be tinkering with an efficiently run, publicly owned business that acts to kickstart the private sector.

It would be unpopular in the sector, raise little revenue, and dismantle part of Thatcher’s legacy. As for competing with Netflix or Amazon, that is simply not on the cards for Channel 4.
newstatesman.com/politics/media…