There was a moment last November when Channel 4’s senior executives breathed a sigh of relief. Sat at the top table of Channel 4’s 40th birthday party, Chief Executive Alex Mahon was flanked by her…
Sat at the top table of Channel 4’s 40th birthday party, Chief Executivewas flanked by her friend Elisabeth Murdoch and doyens of UK broadcasting, including BBC Director-General Tim Davie and Carolyn McCall, ITV’s Chief Executive. They were raising a glass to a British success story in a rare public display of unity.
Those close to the doomed sale took us behind the scenes of an unsettling and often fraught period for a company that boasts revenues of £1.2B . The sources explain how the government pursued privatization for both business and ideological reasons, and in doing so, took informal soundings from potential buyers, including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
The government’s public case for privatization has always been about sustainability. Ministers said Channel 4 was overwhelmingly reliant on traditional advertising, a decaying source of revenue. They said freeing Channel 4 from public ownership would allow it to borrow more money to invest in content and its digital transformation.
Others were more explicit in linking ideological motives to the disposal of Channel 4. Sources said Dominic Cummings, the top adviser to Johnson at the height of his political powers, messaged Channel 4 News journalists telling them that the government was going to “whack” the broadcaster because of its reporting on issues including Brexit. Cummings has not responded to a request for comment.
“Her whole pitch was: I’m only interested in data and evidence. I can’t see the data and evidence for a sale, but if you show me the data and evidence that this is a good idea, I’ll be persuaded,” says a colleague. “It made her an incredibly credible advocate and witness.”Channel 4’s positioning was a source of endless debate internally as executives war-gamed their way through 18 months of limbo.
The scale of opposition to privatization became clear when the government published a summary of the responses to its consultation on Channel 4’s future. Some 96% of the 55,737 responses disagreed with the idea that public ownership could eventually kill Channel 4. Only 2% advocated for a sale. In another incident, a friend of Dorries says Channel 4 leaders were called in for a “real bollocking” during a “no tea, no coffee” meeting at the DCMS last summer. “There was real anger over some of the things they were doing in terms of public speeches and briefing,” says the source. Others joke that it was not unusual for the DCMS to forget to offer refreshments.
The DCMS was “incandescent” that Mahon had gone public with the spat, according to two people. Officials accused Channel 4 of planting a question about the annual report with Kevin Brennan, a Labour MP who sits on the culture select committee. Brennan denies the allegation, saying he would never warn witnesses about his line of questioning. Channel 4 insiders argue that the annual report was always part of the agenda for the committee hearing.
More than 20 Conservative MPs were prepared to vote against the sale, while members of the House of Lords, which has a role in shaping UK legislation, also said they would protest. One Conservative peer, who was supportive of a sale, concedes: “It would have been subject to a huge amount of argy-bargy … the government would have been defeated left, right, and center.”
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