Analysis: Channel 4 Staff Cull Plan Could Help Repair Ruptured Relations With Indies, But Some Commissioners May Pay The Price
11.01.2024 - 10:55
/ deadline.com
A producer wryly tells us that they arrived to Channel 4 HQ in late 2023 to discover a boarded-up front, feeling their way around to a narrow door on the side of the building “where there stands a huge f***ing bouncer.”
If ever there was a metaphor for the British broadcaster’s relations with the indie sector in recent months, surely this is it. After pulling up the commissioning drawbridge and passing on the financial pain of a disturbingly prolonged ad crisis, producers have oscillated between rage and disillusionment when the subject of Channel 4 rears its head.
There has been an inescapable sense that Channel 4 has not been listening to the concerns of its suppliers, even if this is hotly disputed by the broadcaster itself. But the mood music has now changed. Channel 4 is, for the first time, publicly acknowledging that it must share in the pain being felt by producers. A plan to cull 200 jobs is a brutal reminder of its continued vulnerability to a volatile ad market, but could also signal a new dawn for the network’s troubled relationship with indies, which felt like they hit rock bottom in 2023.
At a meeting of the Edinburgh TV Festival Board in November featuring multiple senior figures from the indie community, we understand tensions that had been building for months and had been covered plenty by this website – kicked off by the cancelation of a high-profile reboot of reality series Four Weddings – started boiling over.
A number of these indie bods are understood to have railed against Channel 4 programs boss Ian Katz’s Edinburgh address – during which he said there had been a “perception” that his network’s financial picture is “more dramatic than elsewhere” – while saying they should be leaning harder on
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