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Up in the air? Snoddy on Channel 4’s future

Up in the air? Snoddy on Channel 4’s future

As Alex Mahon is named Channel 4’s new chief executive, Raymond Snoddy examines the reasons behind the choice, and outlines the challenges – old and new – that await her

Channel 4 has entered unfamiliar territory. As Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow makes clear, in seven general election campaigns Theresa May is the first serving Prime Minister to refuse him an interview despite weeks of requests [she caved in last minute – see our note, and Snow’s interview, at the end – Ed].

“Why?” Snow asks plaintively, but surely rhetorically.

This is in fact one of the easier questions to answer about Channel 4 at the moment.

The PM was obviously running scared of the news anchor’s tough questions despite both being Church of England offspring, though Snow is the son of a bishop and she the daughter of a village vicar.

Better luck Jon with your eighth serving Prime Minister.

Almost everything else about Channel 4 is up in the air at the moment. David Abraham is handing over to Alex Mahon; Jay Hunt has elected to throw herself overboard – and the government likely to be in power on Friday wants to send the channel to Birmingham or Manchester.

Then there is the drift of the channel’s trademark younger audiences to non-traditional television followed by the challenge of the impact of a hard Brexit on advertising revenues.

It’s been a tough 18 months or so for a channel that is structurally unique in the world of broadcasting and the threat to privatise was real enough as long as John Whittingdale occupied the Culture Secretary’s chair.

The uncertainty, and the resulting inability of chief executive David Abraham to be able to tell either his staff or his partners and customers what was going on, contributed to his decision to throw in the towel after a largely successful seven years in charge.

Abraham almost certainly always wanted to set up his own company in the private sector as he plans to do next year – but it was probably the politics and the frustration that accelerated the timing.

To lose a chief executive is something that just happens – and always has at Channel 4. David Abraham is the sixth chief and second-longest serving after Michael Grade.

Amidst such a fundamental change, however, conventional wisdom saw the promotion of chief creative officer Jay Hunt as both the natural succession and also the stability ticket.

Hunt, former controller of BBC One, is not a Birmingham or Manchester sort of a woman and she may have also had her “head turned”, as football managers like to say of their young charges, by the lucre on offer from the West Coast tech companies.

It is highly likely that her abrupt announcement before her £75 million Bake Off Snatch even gets to air was mainly triggered by the word that the top job at the channel was going to an outsider.

Vastly out-bidding the BBC for Bake Off was a politically dangerous stunt by Hunt when the outcome of the privatisation debate was far from clear, as was the decision to sign before the presenters were tied into the deal.

Channel 4 will probably get away with it in the end because of the potential for lucrative sponsorship deals forbidden to the BBC, but the channel will be very lucky if it pulls in half the audience enjoyed on BBC One.

What did it for Hunt in the end was the extraordinary range of credentials on offer from the seventh chief executive of Channel 4, Alex Mahon, whose experiences encompassed not just television production but, at the Foundry, technology, software, the internet and special effects.


Alex Mahon

Mahon, who will be the first woman to run Channel 4 on a permanent basis, has experience in child labour working in her mother’s Edinburgh pharmacy and has been everything from waitress, barmaid, dishwasher, and technology consultant to chief executive of TV production company Shine.

Along the way she has nine step-brothers and sisters, four children of her own and a doctorate in medical physics.

Not even Abraham could match a range like that.

But as the search for a new chief creative officer gets under way it amounts to one hell of a lot of change at the top of Channel 4.

Then there is the Conservative manifesto pledge to move Channel 4 out of London.

The danger was always there and easily predictable.

For politicians the option of leaving well alone when things are going well after 36 years never seems to appeal.

In the absence of a case for privatisation, something – anything – has to be done to show they are on the ball, particularly when you have, in Karen Bradley, a Midlands MP as Culture Secretary.

More than any other broadcaster it is difficult to know what moving Channel 4 would actually entail.

It has no programme-making department and spends £700 million of its £1 billion annual revenues on programmes.

The simplest and most obvious way to boost skilled jobs in the North is to set increased targets for programmes commissioned outside London. They might even reflect the country better.

After that what departments could usefully go? Advertising? Taking the department away from its London-based customers the ad agencies hardly makes much sense.

A move of programme commissioning would simply increase the number of meetings that will take place in trains or in railway stations and increase costs.

Transporting the small management staff north, while leaving important departments behind in London, scarcely makes much sense either.

Michael Grade did something quite controversial while chief executive. With an eye for the importance of property he decided that Channel 4 should own its own headquarters rather than lease or rent.

It was an expensive move in the short-term but looks very prudent now.

If Channel 4 staff are scattered will the building now have to be sold or whole floors rented out? Morale, sense of purpose and togetherness will all be affected by an unnecessary disruption.

The Government should have the courage to reject a bad idea that is little more than geographical tokenism.

Media companies need periods of renewal and with further creative and wise choices Channel 4 will probably survive its current period of uncertainty and may even emerge stronger than before.

Jon Snow finally got his interview late in the day while on the run – and he did a good job:

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