Armando Iannucci says Channel 4 privatisation plans don’t “make any business sense”
nme.complans to sell Channel 4 don’t “make any business sense” and undermine the channel’s “tremendous economic and cultural achievement”.The Scottish filmmaker criticised the government’s proposals to privatise the publicly owned channel, which he clarified does not cost the taxpayer any money as Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries wrongfully claimed last year, because it’s paid for by ad revenue.Iannucci, known for TV shows including The Thick Of It and I’m Alan Partridge as well as feature films such as The Death Of Stalin (2017), wrote in a The Guardian op-ed that the move has been ill-thought-out as he questioned why a broadcaster that “puts billions into the economy and promotes British culture and values internationally” should be sold off.“It doesn’t make any business sense, and it’s certainly not patriotic,” he wrote. “I regularly get asked by international broadcasters why the UK government has such a destructive agenda against the country’s main television networks.“Dorries tweeted yesterday that ‘government ownership is holding Channel 4 back’, which perhaps explains part of the problem, that she sees the network as some manifestation of the Big State.
This certainly was her view when she told the culture select committee last year, wrongly, that the channel benefited from public money.
The truth is, though, it’s not the government that owns Channel 4: we, the public, do. Better still, we get it for free. It’s paid for by ad revenue.“Channel 4 was brought in under Margaret Thatcher, and it’s arguably a Thatcherite success story.
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