Campaign
Overview
In 2021/22, Pact mounted a successful campaign - alongside many other industry organisations - to stop the privatisation of Channel 4. The then Culture Secretary, Oliver Dowden published a consultation into the potential sale of Channel 4. At the time the Government provided little factual evidence and made unfounded and incorrect assumptions about Channel 4’s future prospects, citing the change in media consumption and pressures against competing with streaming platforms as a reason for the potential sale.
In our response to the Government's consultation, we stated that the sale of Channel 4, and any change to its remit, would have drastic implications for the UK’s world-leading independent film and TV sector, impacting members' businesses and the many thousands of jobs the sector creates and sustains across the UK.
We commissioned research by Oliver & Ohlbaum which found that:
- Channel 4 provided an estimated £940 million of value to the independent production sector in 2019, through commissions, secondary sales of Channel 4 programmes, and its contribution to the creative economy. (I.e. its value to production companies, actors and other talent that are a success due to Channel 4’s initial support).
- If a new owner of Channel 4 pursued a strategy of moving productions in-house and took fewer creative risks, this could cost the independent production sector up to £3.7 billion within ten years.
- The full impact would be even greater, as a weakened independent production sector would have a significant knock-on impact on the UK’s wider audiovisual ecosystem over time.
Mobilising
Members
A key part of our campaign involved mobilising the Pact membership. Hundreds of them wrote to their MP to help them to understand the far reaching and detrimental impact of the Government’s plans.
After a considerable public campaign and lobbying efforts across the industry, the Government overturned its plans to privatise Channel 4. However, it sought to continue with plans to allow Channel 4 to go into production, because it still considered it needed to help the broadcaster's sustainability by allowing it to have different revenue streams given its reliance on advertising. To allow channel 4 to go into production the Government needed to remove its publisher broadcaster status, which they did through the Media Act 2024. Previously, Channel 4 had to commission or acquire content entirely from the market.
Impact of
In-House Production
Pact continued to lobby Government to ensure its plans had clear mitigation proposals to prevent undue impact to the wider industry from any future Channel 4 in-house production.
Following consultation with the sector and agreement with Channel 4, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) proposed a package of measures, which included:
- Increasing the independent production quota to 35%
- Channel 4 in-house/Studios should be a separate commercial company with its own board, separate from Channel 4 Corporation
- Channel 4 will be subject to a new complaints process
- Channel 4 Corporation will be subject to increased reporting requirements around levels of commissioning in its annual report
- Channel 4 will work with Ofcom and DCMS on a new commissioning framework and fair trading and operational separation requirements such as information sharing protocols
Several of these measures pushed by Pact, to help mitigate the impact on the independent production sector, were written into the Media Act 2024.
However, we remained concerned about the impact of Channel 4 moving into production, particularly on nations and regions production companies. We continue to lobby for Channel 4’s voluntary commitment of 50% of productions Made Out of London to be written into its licence and for separate nations quotas to be introduced.