Head Of Film4 Quits

The head of Film4, Tom Sykes, has quit just days after the channel moved from a subscription-based service to a free one, according to reports in the trade press.

Sykes will apparently step down from the role in mid-September and has, as yet, not revealed his plans for the future.

Film4, which launched as a free channel on Sunday (see FilmFour To Be Free-To-Air From 23 July), had a peak audience of 875,000 for its screening of Lost in Translation and since then it has been among the ten highest rated digital channels for the period.

Sykes, a former BSkyB head of network presentation, joined Film4 as channel manager before its launch in 1998. The reports quote Sykes as saying that “now is the logical moment for me to move on to new challenges.”

Film4: Film4