Credit: Flickr / David Huntingdon
On his last day of six years in office as chairman of Channel 4, that wisest of owls, Lord (Terry) Burns told listeners to Radio 4’s The Media Show that “you can have the Channel 4 remit, or you can have privatisation, but you cannot have both”.
The logic behind this pronouncement has a respectable history. A previous chairman, Sir Michael (later Lord) Bishop, of impeccable Tory credentials, warned then Prime Minister John Major against any idea of privatisation in 1996: “when conventional shareholder pressures are applied to the TV industry...quality and choice are diminished...with new shareholders seeking to maximize profits, money for dividends would have to be taken from the screen”.
