euro news1112v3_news 10/12/2015 18:20 Page 5
C4 chief: ‘Privatisation could
devastate creative sector’
avid Abraham, Chief Executive
of UK public service
broadcaster Channel Four, has
warned of potentially “utterly
devastating” effects on the British
creative sector if mooted funding
models for the publicly-owned
Corporation were to result in
ownership passing to international
broadcasting
interests or
‘asset
strippers’.
UK Prime
Minister David
Cameron
confirmed in
November that
the government
is looking at all
options to secure
the financial
future of the
channel, including a private sector sale.
Abraham (right) told the Broadcasting
Press Guild that 2016 could potentially be one
D
Noting that Prime Minister Cameron had
publicly expressed his support for and
admiration for the broadcaster, Abraham
highlighted the PM’s comments regarding the
possibility of private investment being part of
its future. He saw the possibility of Channel
Four being given greater freedom to raise
money as a “more positive” starting point than
the narrow discussion that suggested state
ownership per se was undesirable.
“My fear here is that if the market is trying
to tell the Government that a sale of Channel
Four is the thing that will maintain its
sustainability, there are other ways at looking
at this challenge.” He suggested it was wellknown that the Government was being
courted by international buyers and domestic
asset strippers and encouraged it to spend as
much time listening to the broadcaster’s
viewers, who were saying that it was delivering
to the remit “in spades”.
“The challenge for those that wish to buy
us is to convince the Government that they
can deliver the remit as well as the current
management is doing,” he suggested, adding
that the framework to hold the private
company to account was
“challenging” as evidenced by
the Ofcom Statement from
2009 which meant that a
private company could only
be held to account by a
regulator through the courts,
whereas if Abraham and the
current board were failing, then they would
simply be removed by the regulator.
“What I’m hearing is that potential buyers
of Channel Four are really only seriously
interested if they can take production inhouse, because that is what will create the
multiples for them,” he advised. “What is
certain to me is that the impact on the
creative economy will be utterly devastating.
Working with hundreds of independent
companies up and down the UK is central to
what makes Channel Four Channel Four. It is
essential to the diversity which is at the heart
of our remit,” he declared.
“The opposite to this is consolidation,
which is what the rest of the market is
focused on, which is fine, but Channel Four is
here to do something different. We do believe
that there are reforms to how the Terms of
Trade operate that could be considered in
order for us to maintain our model in a digital
age, but we have never campaigned and will
never campaign for the dissolution of this
framework altogether.”
“The challenge for those that wish to
buy us is to convince the Government
that they can deliver the remit as
well as the current management.”
of the “most seismic” in over a decade for UK
TV, with the BBC Charter Review, Fox
indicating that at some future stage it would
seek to take full control of Sky Europe and the
possibility of ITV being sold to a US major.
“Those three things alone would be enough
for us to say that’s a pretty seismic year, but
here we are with Channel Four on the agenda
too,” he noted, admitting that privatisation
had been on the agenda for the past 33 years
since its founding in 1982.
According to Abraham, there were two
types of debate, One: Channel Four was no
longer delivering to its remit, or Two: the
‘model in peril’ debate, which argues that
Channel Four would become incapable of
delivering from a financial point of view as a
result of factors such as digital switchover.
He noted that Ofcom had rejected a merger
proposal from PSB Channel 5‘s then owner
RTL on the grounds that there would be “clear
tensions between the objectives of Channel 5’s
sole shareholder to maximise profits and
Channel Four’s desire to maximise public
service delivery.”
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