Channel 4 needs programme making expertise at the top

Sometime very soon, and probably later today, Lord Burns is expected to be appointed chairman of Channel 4.

He has emerged undetected from the shadows as some of the usual suspects were publicly paraded, including Greg Dyke, Richard Eyre and Chorion boss Lord Waheed Alli.

Ofcom may be a tad ponderous as an organisation but it does usually manage to keep its confidential process confidential – confidential at least until very late in the day.

This is only the second Channel 4 chairman the communications regulator has appointed but if the Johnson choice had been any guide the choice would have been off-the-wall, bordering on the eccentric. A rabid free-marketeer whose public reputation was mainly associated with the fortunes of Pizza Express?  Surely not?

Instead this time Ofcom has gone for a much more orthodox candidate – the football-loving former permanent secretary to the Treasury who has also chaired Abbey.

The QPR supporter has been a controversial figure in broadcasting. He once advised the then culture secretary Tessa Jowell that the BBC licence fee should be replaced by voluntary subscription – advice that has gathered  dust.

The channel has been chaired by knights of the realm before but never by a Peer. Richard Attenborough got his peerage the year after leaving Channel 4.

Maybe in these recessionary times a financially literate Peer will be a reassuring thing to have, although Lord Burns is consistent with the past in never having anything directly to do with running a broadcasting organisation.

The strange thing is that if history is any guide, within reason,  it seems to matter very little who actually chairs the Channel 4 board. A search for a pattern among previous chairmen of the  channel reveals that there isn’t really one.

Politician, film producer, airline operator, City lawyer and restaurant owner and now former civil servant. The only thing they have in common is that they were somehow selected to run Channel 4.

And while people moan behind the scenes about how dreadful and useless one or more of them were, the truth is the strong culture of the channel survived rather well and was passed on from one generation of programme makers to the next because, or more likely despite, the person who occupied the chair at the time. It has probably mattered rather more who the chief executive has been and here the pattern is much clearer.

With the single exception of the out-going incumbent Andy Duncan, all have either been programme-makers, or at least in the case of Michael Grade, programme executives closely associated with programme-makers.

Although the channel’s director of programmes is clearly a key position, one of the determinants of success is likely to be the relationship between the chairman and chief executive.

There is nothing wrong at all with putting an entrepreneur with no experience of television in the chair.  But when you add a chief executive whose background is almost entirely in marketing then you have the makings of an experiment that should not be repeated.

With a channel that lives or dies by its creative ideas rather than its overwhelming resources, it is surely wise to have as much  programming making expertise as possible at the highest level.

In many ways, the founding team at Channel 4 had perhaps the ideal blend of skills. There was the clever, if remote, chairman, the Labour politician Edmund Dell, the highly talented if disorganised programme-maker Jeremy Isaacs and then there was Justin Dukes to handle all the vulgar money and business issues that were not Isaacs’s main priority.

It might not be a bad idea to seek to recreate a blend of such talents for such admittedly different times. Lord Burns paired with Peter Fincham of ITV perhaps?

As the present regime shuffles towards the exit the score cards  may have an occasional “7” but no sign of  “8s” or “9”s.

There was the poor supervision of Big Brother – not to forget overdependence on its profits – and the phone scandal which led  to a £1.5 million Ofcom fine.  An accident waiting to happen, perhaps, but senior management has to take responsibility.

There was the misguided attempt to take on BBC Radio 4 with speech radio. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time but chains ought to have been pulled tighter to make sure Channel 4 stuck to its main purpose, particularly as it was simultaneously crying poverty.

It was the policy of crying poverty, well before any hint of a recession and while the channel had reserves of more than £200 million, that in the end brought Channel 4 close to disrepute.

Naturally at the same time grandiose ideas were still being advanced which would require even further public subsidy.

Those of a suspicious mind thought Channel 4 might just have been deliberately spending close to its limit so there wouldn’t  be too much embarrassing profit  hanging about.

Years were wasted shaking the collection tin – time that would have been much better spent on improving efficiency and stretching for more creative programme ideas.

It is not clear whether it was Johnson, Duncan or both primarily  responsible for taking Channel 4 up this cul-de-sac.

That it failed became startlingly clear this week when Duncan had to admit that the last glimmer of hope for the comfort blanket policy had effectively disappeared. There will be no deal with BBC Worldwide in the foreseeable future. For that you  can probably read no deal at all.

Now Johnson and Duncan argue that Channel 4 can survive without public subsidy but will have to cut its cloth etc. Not  exactly how they used to put it.

Lord Burns will be a good man to look  after the pennies in recessionary times  and making sure the channel lives within its means.

Now its time to get programme-making expertise at the highest levels of Channel 4 and getting back to what it does best –  making great programmes rather than whingeing about its financial lot in  life.

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