Nadine Dorries strikes again. It is impossible to take her seriously as a politician of substance, but she seems determined to do – and capable of doing – serious damage. She has restated her intention to push ahead with selling off Channel 4, in order, she says, to allow it to compete with Netflix and Amazon, from which destiny it is currently being “held back”. This makes no sense, and shows a lack of understanding of what these streamers are and what they do (giant US tech companies aiming for global reach); and of what Channel 4 is and does (a British public-service broadcaster that publishes, rather than owns, the material it commissions, and is aimed at generating a diverse, lively domestic production sector).
Why anyone would feel the need to transform Channel 4’s ownership arrangements is a mystery. A Tory government rejected the notion in 2016. Indeed, senior Conservatives, including the former culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Ruth Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Tories, have publicly condemned the idea since the culture secretary’s latest pronouncement on the matter. What many Tories grasp, but Ms Dorries seems not to, is that Channel 4, though in public ownership, costs the taxpayer nothing, since it raises its own cash and then, crucially, ploughs its revenues back into commissioning. In November she asserted to a parliamentary select committee that the channel is funded by the taxpayer. This is quite simply untrue (indeed, she was immediately corrected by her questioner, fellow Tory Damian Green). It is concerning that the fate of a national broadcaster depends, at least in part, on someone who seems to know so little about it.
As to the potential proceeds of this sale, Ms Dorries airily claims that they will be spent on “levelling up the creative sector [and] putting money into independent production and creative skills in priority parts of the country”. The same objective could be achieved much more efficiently by letting Channel 4 remain in public ownership, and continuing to commission material from programme-makers based around the UK. In fact, following its recent move to Leeds, two-thirds of its programming hours are now produced outside London. Even if the government were to lay down conditions with a buyer, it is likely that commitments to regional commissioning, as well as a long-established responsibility to serve diverse and minority audiences, would slip.
It should be acknowledged that Channel 4 is far from perfect. It is not quite the bastion of the avant garde that folk memory of the 1980s often suggests. It can do more to fulfil its founding ambitions. Nevertheless, there are wonderful bright spots – shows such as Russell T Davies’ It’s A Sin, about young British gay men at the start of the Aids crisis, and the comedy We Are Lady Parts, about a Muslim women’s post-punk band – which have been recognised with multiple Bafta nominations.
It is also fair to suggest that the current model of raising revenues from television advertising may not serve the broadcaster for ever. But a sale to a huge overseas player would probably mean the end of that granularly British work that it makes at its best. Consider, by way of contrast, the glossy, could-be-made-anywhere quality of the material on Netflix; however brilliant the streaming giant’s programmes are, it tends to polish them into a kind of globally acceptable sheen.
Fortunately, Ms Dorries’ words are not the last on this matter. Channel 4’s privatisation would have to pass through the Commons and, crucially, the Lords. Wiser heads must prevail, and this nonsense – which is nakedly about politics rather than the real needs of a much-loved broadcaster – must be stopped in its tracks.
