What's going on at C4?

THE channel created by its first chief executive, Sir Jeremy Isaacs, to provide a distinctive strand of programming and to cater for minorities not acknowledged by mainstream TV, seems to have lost its way. Having been profitable for years, it lost pounds 20 million last year. Although its overall annual ratings seem respectable, much of that is an artefact of Big Brother, a squalid exercise in lowest common denominator programming - the kind of trash one expects from ITV, not from an upmarket broadcaster.

Strip away the Big Brother effect and we find that the Channel has been losing viewers in key advertising sectors, namely 16 to 24-year- olds and ABC1 males. And across all time slots, its audience share is down by 14 per cent over the first four weeks of the autumn schedule. For the first time in its history, Channel 4 finds itself looking over its shoulder - not at BBC2, but at Channel 5 and Sky One.

How has it come to this? It comes down to leadership, or, more precisely, the lack of it. When Sir Jeremy departed to run the Royal Opera House, there was much surprised indignation at the appointment of his successor Michael Grade. Grade brought his showbiz intuition to bear on the channel, making it less worthy and more glitzy.

He moved it from its Charlotte Street home to a purpose-built folly in Horseferry Road. But he also shrewdly liberated the channel from the original deal in which it was dependent on ITV to sell its advertising slots. As a result, Channel 4 became a booming commercial property, lucrative enough to tempt John Major's government into contemplating its privatisation.

Prosperity clouds everyone's judgment. In most businesses, healthy balance sheets and booming order books signal success. But the same does not necessarily apply in a cultural institution, which is what Channel 4 was always intended to be. The prosperity of the Grade years obscured the slow drift in the channel's programming and, in particular, to its adoption of demographic rather than cultural interpretations of what the term " minority" meant.

When Grade departed, he was replaced by Michael Jackson, an infant prodigy who had been spectacularly over-promoted within the BBC, eventually winding up as head of BBC2. Jackson was a wunderkind with an inexhaustible knowledge of television acquired through decades of total immersion and a consequent detachment from reality.

He was obsessed with the demographic changes taking place in British society and convinced that his mission was to reshape Channel 4 to reflect these changes. He felt that the minorities for which Channel 4 had originally catered for had been assimilated into mainstream UK society, so the station should look elsewhere for its clientele.

Under Jackson, Channel 4 became bloated and intellectually challenged. He bet the ranch on acquiring The Simpsons and wound up paying pounds 700,000 per episode. The financial bounty of the Grade regime was squandered by staff escalation and rash investments in digital technology. Jackson funked the axing of Brookside, a rusting hulk costing pounds 16 million a year. In the end, the broadcaster which spawned Brass Eye and Ali G was reduced to citing Location, Location, Location, Grand Designs and the Richard and Judy show as distinctive offerings.

Jackson left in July 2001 and was replaced, after a damaging eightmonth hiatus, by Mark Thompson of the BBC. He was the obvious candidate, having risen like a rocket in the Corporation to be director of television at 44 and possessing the magic blend of managerial nous and programme-making experience which marks out successful executives.

Under John Birt, Thompson was more Birtist than his master; under Greg Dyke he metamorphosed into a Dykehamist, yet attracted no odium.

Thompson was popular in the BBC partly because he has a good creative pedigree - his credits include Goodness Gracious Me, The Royle Family, The Cops, League of Gentleman, Back to the Floor and Shooting the Past - but is mainly due to his capacity for self- mockery. "He admits he has changed," said a former colleague, "but does it with such openness and bravura that it does not cause resentment." And it also helps that he has a very thick skin.

Arriving at Channel 4, Thompson spent six months surveying the wreckage and declared that, on his watch, there would be no sacred cows. To prove the point, he is axing Brookside, firing more than 200 staff and blowing pounds 430 million on a grand new winter schedule.

On closer inspection, however, these plans seem distinctly underwhelming.

There is, for example, to be a series on Britain in Bed, billed as "the most complete audit of the nation's sexuality, relationships and sexual habits".

There will also be a series about the ancient Seventies' practice of wife-swapping, not exactly groundbreaking stuff.

Other Thompson crackers include: Shameless - eight episodes of gritty realism about teenagers growing up in t'north; Second Generation - a drama about immigrant families living in London; and Nurses, a series about four nurses "dealing with life, death and institutional lunacy" in Leeds. And, just to prove that the Channel has not lost touch with another persecuted minority - viewers with single-digit IQs there will be The People's Book of Records, an alternative guide to world records, including "How long can you stare at a dog's bum?"

How long indeed? And how long can Thompson pretend that he is providing a service that is truly distinctive and original? If he wants to achieve his goal of being the next director-general of the BBC, he will have to try harder.

Copyright 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.