Channel 4 Sales, the commercial arm of the public-service broadcaster, has completed its new senior leadership team by appointing David Amodio as head of sales and Jay Kassam as head of business operations and revenue innovation.
The pair of new hires round out a senior leadership team that also includes head of trading Ed Chalmers, head of advertiser strategy Sam Hicks, and head of advertising operations Barry John. In September, Mark Watts was also appointed sales leader for the nations and regions.
The team is led by Rak Patel, who joined Channel 4 in October of last year after more than seven years as a sales lead for Spotify.
Over the past year, Patel has overseen a vast reorganisation of the broadcaster’s commercial team, bringing in new staff, many of whom from tech companies, and letting go of long-time employees including Chris Braithwaite, Martin Luck, Ewan Douglas, Fatima Dowlet and Rupinder Downie.
“Channel 4 Sales is built on a powerful combination: opportunities combining trust and purpose, with the power of linear and precision of streaming,” he commented. “With these appointments, we’re moving further on our journey to being the most progressive partner in media, uniting our service heritage with world class sales expertise”.
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Amodio and Kassam will join Channel 4 in January. In their newly created roles, Amodio will be tasked with delivering Channel 4’s sales strategy across the UK agency landscape, while Kassam will be responsible for driving overall business strategy and developing new commercial solutions.
Amodio previously spent more than 17 years at Channel 4, most recently as deputy head of commercial innovation and 4Studio. He left the broadcaster in May 2024 to join Amazon as its head of video sales specialists for Northern Europe. In his role, he promoted Amazon’s “TV to till” strategy as it melded its Prime Video and retail media offerings.
“Returning to Channel 4 feels like coming home to a place where passion meets purpose,” Amodio commented. “I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to work with Rak and the incredible team. I’m ready to ignite the next phase of a journey that will redefine broadcasting by helping the channel become the first public-service streamer”.
Kassam, meanwhile, joins from Reddit, where he has worked on global revenue strategy and operations since May 2023. Kassam also previously worked for nearly six years at Spotify, most recently as head of EMEA and JAPAC sales operations, where he overlapped with Patel as well as Hicks.
The new leadership team will be responsible for Channel 4’s Fast Forward strategy, which aims to modernise the broadcaster by driving digital-first creative and commercial output by 2030. The effort, originally spearheaded by former CEO Alex Mahon, is now led by interim CEO Jonathan Allan.
In its annual earnings report released in May, Channel 4 reported a modest 1% year-on-year increase in total revenue to £1.04bn in 2024. This was led by digital ad revenue (+9% to £306m, or roughly 30% of total revenue). Channel 4 still derived more than 60% of its revenue from linear, however.
The commercial team may also need to navigate an uncertain TV market. Not only has adspend shifted away from linear and toward connected TV (CTV) and social video, but should Sky acquire ITV, Channel 4 would be challenged to compete with a competitor with vastly larger scale and market share.
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