Channel 4 Hits Back at U.K. Government With New $1.25 Billion Plan to Stay Independent
variety.comNaman Ramachandran U.K. broadcaster Channel 4, which is facing the threat of being privatized by Boris Johnson’s government, has revealed an unsuccessful counter-proposal to remain independent.A key element of the proposal, which is titled “4: The Next Episode,” is creating an intellectual property joint venture (JV) proposition with an external investor as majority shareholder, which would see a significant private capital investment into Channel 4 for the first time.
The broadcaster claims it would bring £1 billion (£1.25 billion) of new British investment in British content by 2030. Some aspects of the plan, which was presented to the government in February, were leaked to the press in April.
Channel 4, which currently operates on a broadcaster-publisher model, where all programming is commissioned from external producers (Channel 4 doesn’t have an in-house production outfit), says that it would “reinvest revenues from the secondary sale of IP [presumably by setting up a distribution outfit] into domestic U.K.
content commissioning, bringing new money into the ecosystem” and that it would benefit from IP without breaching the publisher-broadcaster model. “Establishing a one-stop shop for financing for independent production companies, removing the challenges of assembling complex financing structures and speeding up recommissioning,” was listed as another benefit of this model, as was developing its domestic VOD platform All 4 as a streamer that’s operational globally.
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