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What’s the point of Channel 4? Deliberately created to provide a platform for a noisy gaggle of independent TV producers, and thus shake up the then deadweight production duopoly of the BBC and ITV, it has a good claim to be the catalyst for what has become the most dynamic and successful independent TV production sector in the world – an early and possibly unique example of a dramatically successful policy intervention on behalf of the creative industries.
But that was 30 years ago. What’s it done since? It’s been a champion for diversity, sometimes exhaustingly and even tiresomely so when it comes to issues of sex and sexuality, though let’s not forget the Paralympics. It’s been central to the dynamism of independent British cinema, combining creative risk-taking and successful talent development with enough Oscars to make any Hollywood major envious. It’s been a real pioneer in a range of online services, most of which have probably escaped the notice of anyone over the age of 21. It also provides a significant quantity of educational content aimed, pretty successfully, at kids who need it and, judging by the figures, appreciate it. It runs one of the best TV news programmes anywhere, with a focus on international events that most mainstream broadcasters avoid, and it cranks out current affairs documentaries in a way other broadcasters haven’t done for a couple of decades. Leaving aside the fact that it also produces a vast amount of crap – some of it almost as crappy as the crap you find on most other channels – it still does all those interesting and unusual things today, and that makes our media world a little richer than it would otherwise be. And so it should. That’s what it’s there for. The Communications Act of 2003 requires Channel 4 to “demonstrate innovation, experiment and creativity in the form and content of programmes” and to “exhibit a distinctive character”. It doesn’t even have to do these things on-air as a conventional broadcaster; Schedule 9 of the Act simply says it should “make a broad range of relevant media content of high quality”.
