Channel Four is 25 Years Old

The original Big Brother housmates

Channel 4 is 25 years old on November 2. Or 25 years young. Very young. Juvenile in fact if you think of some of the programmes that it has shown over the years. As well as some truly wonderful stuff.

Think for a minute about the famous "Oliver Reed moment", when the actor hijacked an episode of late-night chatshow After Dark when he was drunk and proceeded to insult feminist writer Kate Millet by trying to kiss her and calling her "big tits".
 
 Channel 4 stopped the show and hastily replaced it with a grainy documentary about coal mining, but not before Reed was seen falling over a sofa on his way to the toilet.
In some ways, the pissed up Reed represented the spirit of a channel which at times got so overexcited with the train set of a young vibrant new broadcaster that it went awry.
And I have to say, having seen the incident a number of times since, it is bloody funny.
 
As was the Saturday evening show Union World which analysed trade union matters. Remember it? No. And nor do many people. And the less said about Designer Vaginas and Penis Week the better.
 
Also Channel 4 News had to be seen to be believed in the early days when calling it a disaster would be like comparing the sinking of the Titanic to a mishap in a paddling pool.
But now it is probably the best news programme on terrestrial television.
 
But there was also The Tube and the drama Walter, which was broadcast on Channel 4's opening night on November 2, 1982.
Directed by Stephen Frears, Walter told the story of a mentally retarded boy who lost his parents and starred Sir Ian McKellen in one of his first big TV roles and it was absolutely, stunningly brilliant.
 
And then there’s film My Beautfiul Launderette, the first big success for the broadcaster's movie production arm FilmFour which gave many people their first ever experience of independent movies.  Aso directed by Mr Frears, who went on to do so much. And Channel 4 was the home of Jonathan Ross's 80s chatshow The Last Resort which launched his career, like it or not.
 
And then …and then…Remember the Enid Blyton spoof by the Comic Strip team, Five go Mad in Dorset and Alan Bleasdale's drama GBH? Drop the Dead Donkey, Chris Morris, Ricky Gervais and, more recently Peep Show?
The list could go on.
 
And now it’s all being celebrated – with nostalgic programming and a big swish party at the end of the month.
 
I am reliably informed that Channel 4 had initially planned to air a less deferential 25th anniversary tribute season, thinking that ITV1's 50th anniversary programming last year was too “schmaltzy” according to a senior source at the company. It also celebrated its 20th birthday so there was no apparent need to do it again.
 
But bosses there decided to change tack after getting such a carpeting over the recent broadcasting scandals - the Celebrity Big Brother racism row, in particular, and the phone vote scandal with Richard & Judy's You Say We Pay competition.
 
But here they are. They have even recently unveiled a 50 foot high “4” logo art work outside their SW1 HQ.
 
The project will see four artists "customising" the commission over the next 12 months.
Photographer Nick Knight is the first artist to unveil his design, Heart, in which the logo will be dressed with pictures of the area of the human chest around the heart. Knight said of his design: "'Heart' is a sculpture that appears to be living, gently breathing in and out.
The chests are from people of different racial origins and my intention is to suggest that the sculpture is a 'heart' and that Channel 4 is a "living, responsive, reflection of multicultural Britain."
 
You'd think the Big Brother race row never happened. But that rather vile little incident was particularly embarrassing for the channel which has always prided itself on its multicultural values and last year got a Muslim woman in a veil to deliver an alternative Queen’s speech. It was brilliant. Or even if you didn’t like it, still brilliantly Channel 4.
But I will return to Big Brother because I think that programme, cheaper series after series, summarises and embodies the malaise of the channel.
 
But nice things first. Because like it or not, if you were, like me, a kid who grew up with Eighties Thatcherism, Channel 4 will have some sort of place in your heart, probably a good one.
 
In fact it's hard to explain to today’s young people just what an event the Channel 4 was. I mean – we now had four channels to choose from!  Today's teenagers probably would never believe me if I told them that my family only had one TV set in the house. That it had only three channels until 1982. AND it was black and white.
 
But now…now. In my view, despite some wonderful programmes, the Channel has lost its way.
 
Yes, we still have  wonderful programmes such as The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off and The Last Peasants. But there really is no justification for Big Brother any more. And that really sums up the channels problems for me.
 
What started out as bold an innovative is trashy and headline grabby and no longer worthy of the channel which gave us A Very British Coup, Boys from the Blackstuff and GBH. It is no longer interesting except to tabloid news editor looking for fodder in the news lean weeks of the summer.
 
As ITV boss Michael Grade said, the channel had dumbed down to chase ratings, and was fixated with sex and 'adolescent transgression'. He must have been thinking about Channel 4.
 
And I agree even more with Charles Allen, Grade’s predecessor at ITV, who argued even more acutely in his 2006 MacTaggart lecture that the channel leans on the public purse and yet competes in the commercial market place. He said C4 has started to behave “like a 25-year-old still living at home. Dipping into mum's purse, even when it's got a fat pay cheque in its back pocket”.

To give you an idea of the numbers: the channel is publicly owned but financed by advertising: It made £48.5m in 2005, but profits are thought to have fallen to around £20m last year and are expected to continue dropping in the face of competition from other media ( hence the channel asking for government money to fill in the shortfall.)

Channel 4 currently receives free access to the airwaves-  provided when it launched in 1982-  but that subsidy will become redundant when the UK completes the move to digital TV in 2012.
The media regulator Ofcom is currently reviewing the broadcaster's funding, with Channel 4 seeking a new form of government subsidy, possibly a share of the TV licence fee, to help fund the switch to digital.

And the channel is set to receive an indirect public subsidy worth up to £70m after the BBC offered to pick up its digital switchover bill.
Research carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers this year for Channel 4 has found the broadcaster contributes £2bn a year to the UK economy.

Nevertheless, in a world of multi channel programming it is increasingly hard for Channel 4 to justify its subsidies, especially when it is grabbing share and filling so much of its schedule with lifestyle shows and is cutting down so heavily on its drama output.

 And if it doesn’t want to be forced to change and change soon it can do one thing – and that’s axe Big Brother.
 
 Ben Dowell
 
 
 

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