Abstract
Channel 4 has done much for older children and younger adults in the UK. Would a privatised channel take the same interest in them?
Channel 4, now moving into its fifth decade, can’t pretend to be the wild child of broadcasting any longer but still its brand is, and has always been, distinctly younger – and cooler – than Auntie Beeb’s. Like its near-centenarian relative, it now finds itself under the uncomfortable spotlight of a government that appears to have decided that it has to change – and move from public to private ownership. There is one aspect of Channel 4’s remit that could easily get lost if that goes ahead.
Teenagers are difficult, everyone knows that – and children seem to become teenagers way before their 13th birthday these days. They often choose adult content (to their parents’ eyes, way too adult) and shun anything that looks like it’s made for little kids from well before the age of 13 (which happens to be the official age they can start using social media). That’s why regulators such as Ofcom have given the public service broadcasters, especially the BBC and Channel 4, the responsibility to provide educational as well as entertaining content for them. The BBC, ITV and Channel 5 tend to focus on younger children, leaving C4 with the harder task of reaching teenagers.
Half-way through another challenging Covid-hit school year, it’s worth considering how Channel 4 still meets this part of its remit. Well, with after-school entertainment for sure: if you go to the home page of All4, its video-on-demand service, which, I would suggest, is where younger viewers are more likely to be browsing for shows, top of the bill is Celebs Go Dating, a reality show for the Love Island generation. For the younger audience who prefer cakes to dates, there’s Junior Bake Off – being stripped across the weekly schedule as I write at 5pm. You can also find on All4 a documentary series, first transmitted earlier this school year, called Sixteen: Class of 21.
This features Year 11 pupils at an academy in Dudley, in the West Midlands. There is football-mad Callum, too easily distracted from his online maths class by looking at girls as well as footie on his mobile phone. There is head girl Aaminah and best friends Sade and Kara, all filming themselves as they go through the ups and downs of preparing for their GCSEs, much of the time spent at home rather than in the classroom.
The series was produced by Label1, the same production company that made the remarkable documentary series called Hospital for the BBC, and, it should be noted, supported by the BBC’s longstanding educational partner, the Open University. Well, this show is educational in a different, C4 sort of way. I feel that if Sixteen had been made for the BBC, there might have been more attention on the struggles of the teachers to keep this perilous show on the road, more of the wider context of the examination system and dealing with the endless and ever-changing orders coming down on high from Whitehall. Here, the focus was very much on the young people, and that, surely, was no accident. Channel 4’s mission is to reach young people, partly by holding up a mirror to them.
As the most recent Channel 4 annual report (June 2021) describes their youth strategy, the “focus was on popular mainstream programming that reflects their lives and interests and helps them to better understand the world around them”. In 2020, another classroom-set series The School That Tried To End Racism (still on All4) was another example of this genre.
So the question now is: would such programmes be commissioned if Channel 4 were privatised, or without a sufficiently robust public service regulatory framework? Does the government think that the provision of non-fiction programming like this, targeted at teenagers and made primarily for a UK audience, is worthwhile and needs future-proofing? Can they point to examples of where the streaming services, or other UK-based commercial commissioners, have run shows like these?
It is hard to be confident from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS’s) own statements in its consultation document on Channel 4, where it asks the British public to agree with its preferred option to privatise the channel. First, I would point out, that by referring to Channel 4, we must also include its portfolio of services, particularly E4, 4Music, and the currently free video-on-demand service All4, which have special appeal to a younger audience, and which seem to be subsumed in the discourse around the main channel.
Yes, the government says of a privatised but regulated Channel 4, it “sees the value of delivery of broadcast content appealing to young and diverse audiences” along with a “more risk-based approach to content” and “is minded to retain such obligations”.
There is a big but, though. “It will be important to ensure its remit does not prohibit Channel 4’s future sustainability and its ability to broadcast relevant and quality content given the developments in the media landscape – with young audiences increasingly likely to consume content on non-linear platforms such as VoD services…” This, apparently, regardless of the fact that C4 has its own rather successful VoD service.
What, then, in the end does this commitment to specific, not necessarily commercially driven services for young people amount to? Does the DCMS see that there is a big difference, not least in commissioning intent, between Sex Education, a school-set drama series produced in the UK but commissioned by Netflix, and programmes such as Sixteen and The School That Tried To End Racism?
Callum and Kara are less valuable to broadcasters
For a start, let’s drill down into that phrase “appealing to young and diverse audiences”. This is a phrase that trips off the tongue of media folk, as well as the DCMS, pretty easily these days. It generally refers to a wide demographic of viewers, encompassing people from 16 to 35. Most 35-year-olds are parents, so hardly comparable in life stage with Callum and Kara in Dudley. The younger end of this wide spectrum is hard to reach and also of less commercial value, as long as they have a limited income and purchasing power.
There is little doubt that the market will continue to supply a wealth of content for the wider under-35s audience. It comes down to whether you think entertainment is all that young people need and deserve and also whether you think that something will be missing for teenagers – especially those still at school.
Yes, a privatised Channel 4 would no doubt wish to continue reaching the under-35s – but surely would judge that drama and entertainment were the best genres with which to reach them. How much, if at all, would they continue to commission non-fiction programming with a serious intent? How much would producers feel it was worth investing in developing challenging domestically focused content, when they needed to secure co-production money from internationally centred streaming services? In particular, how much would be aimed at under-16s living, say, in Dudley, with a broader purpose than merely entertaining them? This is the question that the DCMS does not address in its very unspecific, and less than watertight, assurances in its consultation document.
When Karen Brown and I wrote on this topic for the 2016 study What Price Channel 4?, there was plenty of concern among politicians and the regulator Ofcom about the declining supply of programming for older children and teenagers on British screens. As recently as the summer of 2018, Ofcom was challenging broadcasters, not just Channel 4, but ITV and Channel 5 as well, to provide more content specifically made for older children across all genres, including provision of age-appropriate news and programmes that “reflect diverse, younger audiences’ lives”. The DCMS also promoted a new initiative called the Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF), designed to provide additional funding for children’s programming, with a multimillion-pound budget, to be managed by the British Film Institute. This was what they called a “contestable fund”, which some saw as a pilot for much broader rollout across the public service broadcasting (PSB) sector.
At that time, the YACF was widely welcomed by producers specialising in children’s programming – particularly the promised additional investment of £57million over three years. With Covid disruption to production over the past couple of years, it might be too early to judge how successful this initiative will be. Still, the evidence so far does not convince that this would fill the gap left by a privatised Channel 4, nor this very specific market failure. Far from it.
Evaluation of the first two years (available via the BFI website, bfi.org. uk) shows that the fund’s managers made awards worth £12.5million in the first year, and £17million in Year 2 with, somewhat worryingly, fewer applications for production awards in the second year. Some of the projects funded were for niche markets within the children’s TV landscape, for BBC Alba in Gaelic, and S4C, the Welsh-language channel. Only seven of the productions so far have been recommissioned.
Looking in detail at these programmes, it is hard to be convinced that these will meet the challenge Ofcom identified, particularly to meet the needs of older children and teenagers. It’s good to note that Sky has used the fund to provide a news programme for this audience. FYI-SKY on Sky Kids has been recommissioned and won awards, and I would note that it has taken on the territory pioneered by Channel 4 and ITN with First Edition back in the 90s.
So what else has the YACF provided for teenagers so far? It is not a long list and includes Teen First Dates shown on E4 – a spin-off of a successful adult format, like Junior Bake Off of course, and which surely might have seen the light of day without DCMS funding. What is also concerning is that already the DCMS has quietly removed 25 per cent of the original budget of £57million, according to the Children’s Media Foundation. The CMF also reported this January their fears that the scheme could be cut altogether after Year 3. What the DCMS gives, the DCMS can take away it seems. If the YACF dies, then the case for keeping C4’s remit intact surely gets stronger.
Some will say that such top-down initiatives are doomed to fail if the audience itself doesn’t demand it. Young people have moved on and away, they say. Eyeballs are still fixed on screens but not the traditional ones. Of course, this is true, but it also remains true that adults – and parents, in particular – are nervous of the Wild West of online content, and believe there is still a need, not just for regulation, but for the social and cultural values that the public service broadcasting framework embodied over the past hundred years to continue. They do not want to see this washed away in a tide of globalised content, however, slick and well-produced it might be. In summary, they want their kids hearing more Dudley accents than LA ones.
Channel 4, which celebrates its 40th birthday this year, has not grown middle-aged. It is still working very hard to meet the needs of the domestic young audience. It is, for example, busy developing what it calls a digital-first service for 13 to 16-year-olds, including a dedicated Channel 4-branded YouTube channel. This will be run out of its new and growing operation in Leeds. Its early commissions suggest a continuing focus on the well-trodden path of identity and relationships, but give it time to grow, won’t you, DCMS?
Footnotes
Fiona Chesterton was the first commissioning editor for daytime programmes at Channel 4 and, in a long career, was also controller of adult learning at the BBC and director of TV at Skillset. She has just published her first non-fiction book, Secrets Never To Be Told. 
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This is an edited chapter from What Price Channel 4 Now? (ed. John Mair et al).