MGEITF 2009: Channel 4/BBC Worldwide partnership could be announced within weeks

Channel 4’s long-awaited partnership with BBC Worldwide could be finalised within the next few weeks, according to the broadcaster’s chief executive Andy Duncan.

However Duncan, rather disappointedly, revealed that the partnership between C4 and the BBC’s commercial arm “won’t be as big as it could have been”.

He talked about a “mutual partnership” with Worldwide, which he hopes will be agreed within the next few weeks, as a sensible option to help bridge the broadcaster’s £150 million funding gap, and admitted that “other commercial partnerships are also in the pipeline”.

However, the additional partnerships Duncan mentioned clearly don’t involve Five, much to the frustration of his fellow panellist at this year’s MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, Dawn Airey.

Airey, Five’s chief executive, has consistently expressed a desire for the two channels to join forces and become a “compelling proposition” in what she has previously referred to as a “perfect marriage”.

For that reason, Airey sees Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report as a missed opportunity, although Duncan shares a different view.

“Channel 4’s main objective is to be a public service broadcaster,” he said.  “Five’s end purpose is profit. Therefore our end result is different.”

On the other hand, he said, Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide are “very similar – both publicly owned and use public assets to recycle finance back into content”,

He also took the opportunity to take a pop at Ofcom, which was seen as the only real winner from Digital Britain after being given an unprecedented extension of its powers to regulate the industry.

“There is too much regulation in Britain as a whole but the regulations surrounding UK advertising are mad,” Duncan said.

Duncan, perhaps unsurprisingly also found a moment to criticise other regulatory bodies in the UK, namely the OFT and Competition Commission, who blocked a commercial partnership between the broadcasters earlier this year.

“We’re forced to stop a service like Kangaroo [the joint VoD venture between C4, BBC Worldwide and ITV] yet services like Hulu can come in and do what they want.”