Speaking at the MediaTelINSIGHT Media Guardian Future of Digital TV Seminar yesterday, journalist and broadcaster, Ray Snoddy, accused Channel 4 of “hiding money under the carpet”.
Snoddy attacked David Scott, deputy chief executive at Channel 4 saying: “I get very irritated by Channel 4, you guys are taking in so much money at the moment, it’s an embarrassment! Yet at the same time you’re talking about a deficit and looking for £100 million public money, you guys are a disgrace and should not be encouraged”.
He continued: “If you keep coming up with ideas like Jamies School Dinners that brings in five million, it gets you plaudits all over the place. If you spent a fraction of the time on improving the quality of your programmes that you spend modelling the future and running with the begging bowl to the government you wouldn’t need the begging bowl in my view.”
Defending Channel 4, Scott responded to Snoddy saying: “I am quite optimistic for Channel 4 and certainly our first preference is that we can continue to be commercially financed from our own revenues and I think we’ll be able to do that for some time to come.”
“What Ofcom was about in their Public Service Review was looking forward five years, what the Government is doing with the BBC Charter Review is looking forward to ten. We’re looking in that as to where Channel 4 might come out, on an optimistic note I would hope that we would be absolutely fine, what we have agreed with the Government though is that there will be a further point of review of Channel 4 balances in a couple of years to see if that still holds true.”
Scott added: “The Government do want Channel 4 to continue to be a strong competitor to the BBC on public service broadcasting.”
Earlier this year, Channel 4, announced its strongest January performance for five years, revealing a 10.3% audience share for the first month of 2005, beating rival BBC2 (see TV Market To Become More Competitive Says C4 Boss).
Channel 4 performed strongly in 2004, seeing audience share increase by 2%, year on year and January 2005 marks an 11% increase on January 2004. The last time the channel reported such robust growth was in 2000.
Related Links
