Campaign for Broadcasting Equality CIO - written evidence (SCF0027)

INQUIRY INTO THE SUSTAINABILITY OF CHANNEL 4

Channel 4, Diversity and Privatisation

1.      The Campaign for Broadcasting Equality (CBE) welcomes this opportunity to submit written evidence to the inquiry into the sustainability of Channel 4 (C4).

2.      There is, as yet, no gold standard in public service broadcasting for driving diversity. C4 has done more than any other public service broadcaster to advance diversity and CBE is concerned that privatising C4 would compromise its exemplary approach.

C4 360-degrees Diversity Charter

3.      In January 2015, C4 launched its 360-degrees diversity charter.[1]  It pledged that 20% of all staff be black, Asian or minority ethnic (BAME) by 2020 and included targets for employing disabled and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) staff.

4.      At the launch, C4’s head of diversity, Oona King, said “previous attempts to improve diversity, including the Creative Diversity Network, had lacked the transparency, accountability, incentives and hard cash to succeed”.[2] The C4 Charter demonstrated a profound understanding of the challenges to increasing diversity and provided a comprehensive and persuasive thirty point plan for achieving its targets, including detailed Commissioning Diversity Guidelines, clear employee in-house targets as well as wider initiatives to support a pipeline of diverse talent into the industry.

5.      When he was CEO of C4, Michael Grade used to say “The BBC exists to keep us all honest.” When it comes to diversity, C4 sets a benchmark which other public service broadcasters should seek to match. BBC Worldwide, the BBC commercial enterprise, achieved 21.3% BAME staff in 2015 but such staff are not in creative or editorial roles but rather in business, sales and finance. The BBC’s licence fee funded programme making and broadcasting arm only achieved 12.2% BAME in 2015, still marginally short of the 12.5% target set for 2007.[3] BBC has now said 15% of staff and leadership would come from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds by 2020 but it is not clear if the non-commercial programme making and broadcasting arm is expected to achieve this.[4]

C4 360-degrees Diversity Charter – One Year On

6.      Driving diversity in employment requires a frank acknowledgement of the extent of the problem and of failures as well as successes. C4’s practice contrasts favourably with the BBC’s approach. The BBC’s report “Equality And Diversity at the BBC – 2014/15” does not report negative data. [5]

7.      C4’s report “360-degrees Diversity Charter – One Year On”[6] was launched at a packed event in the House of Commons on 19 January. Idris Elba was the main speaker but before he spoke, Dan Brooke, a C4 Board Executive, reported on the past year’s progress with the Diversity Charter.

8.      Brooke was commendably clear about the 6 initiatives in which C4 had not made as much headway as it anticipated. The report listed each of the 30 initiatives stating the Objective, the Result and the Lessons learnt.  It provides a model for evaluating diversity plans which other public service broadcasters should emulate.

9.      Brooke explained how C4 implements its initiatives. It has a cross-departmental task force that meets every two weeks to push the detailed work forward. Each commitment has a champion accountable for its delivery. A wider group from all parts of C4 meets every two months to ensure company-wide feedback is being constantly incorporated. The cross-departmental task force then reports to the Executive and to the Board every three months.

10.  The success of C4’s approach is demonstrated in research Trevor Phillips presented to the Oxford Media Convention.[7] It showed that C4 is the only broadcaster managing to appeal to black, Asian and ethnic minority audiences on the same scale as the population as a whole. BBC2 takes a 5.7% share of the total audience but just 3.3% of black, Asian and ethnic minority viewers, and, while almost 30% of the UK watches the BBC’s Six O’Clock news bulletin, just 15% of BAME viewers do so. In comparison, C4 attracts 5.6% of all viewers and 4.7% of the BAME audience, while its news bulletin gets a 3.2% share of the news audience as a whole but 5.6% of BAME viewers.

Sustainability and the Remit

11.  The narrow issue for CBE is whether the C4 public service broadcasting sector leadership and advances in diversity would be sustainable if C4 moves to profit-maximising status.

12.  It has been reported that the Secretary of State has argued, “The reason we are looking at different options for the future of Channel 4 is to ensure it can continue to deliver the remit, in what is to become a very fast-changing and challenging environment.”[8]

13.  It would be hard to design a remit with sufficient specificity to capture and require the commitment to diversity that is currently demonstrated by C4.

14.  Even Statutory Duties may be ineffective drivers as Ofcom has demonstrated with regard to Section 27 of the Communications Act 2003. Section 37 gave Ofcom the duty to take appropriate steps to promote equal opportunities in broadcasting. Launched on 29 December 2003, Ofcom sought to do the minimum necessary to fulfil this obligation. [9] It is only in 2016, thirteen years later, that Ofcom is looking at the maximum possible action it can take under Section 27 and other legislation.[10]

15.  Remits and licence conditions can encourage diversity but they cannot drive it. Only determined and committed leadership at the most senior level can drive diversity. No other institution has matched the quality of leadership on diversity that C4 has enjoyed.

16.  Thirty five years ago, C4 demonstrated it was not difficult to drive diversity. Two of the key elements were Institutional Commitment from Jeremy Isaacs, Chief Executive and Leadership and Vision from Sue Woodford Hollick, Commissioning Editor, Multicultural Programming. They quickly delivered the current affairs series “Eastern Eye”, “Black on Black” and “The Bandung File and “No Problem,” the Black Theatre Co-operative’s sitcom and the first original comedy series of its kind addressing the lives of a black British family which ran from 1983 to 1985. “No Problem” was followed by “Desmonds” made in and set in Peckham, London, and featured a predominantly Black British Guyanese cast with 71 episodes from 1989 to 1994.[11]

17.  Despite the remit, the momentum to advance diversity attenuated when Mark Thompson arrived at C4 from the BBC, in 2002, to become Chief Executive and for many years the channel lost its focus on BAME programming and employment.

18.  The resurgence of C4’s commitment to diversity is thanks to the appointment of Oona King as Head of Diversity in 2009 and the support of David Abraham, the Chief Executive. Oona King has provided charismatic and determined leadership at C4 and in developing project Diamond with the Creative Diversity Network. The C4 diversity targets and the plans and personnel that are in place to achieve them would be unlikely to survive a change in ownership.

19.  David Elstein has argued to your committee that C4 is “not doing what it ought to be doing.” [12] This is patently not the case when it comes to diversity. If there were to be a tendering process for a C4 licence it would be likely to be managed by Ofcom. We support Elstein’s evidence that Ofcom does not have the expertise to hold licensees to very detailed direct scrutiny that was to be found in the IBA and ITC. The intent behind the Communications Act 2003 was that Ofcom should be an even lighter touch regulator and for broadcasting licensees it is. We do not share Elstein’s optimistic view that Ofcom can now re-acquire the expertise that was embedded in the ITC which equipped the latter to manage the auction process for Channel 3 (ITV) licences and then apply detailed enforcement to licence conditions. Ofcom will have a sufficient challenge in extending its skills base to take on additional responsibilities for regulating the BBC.

20.  We support Trevor Phillip’s view “Based on the actual data about how people behave, Channel 4 right now is the most important agent of integration in our national media. Privatisation would destroy that at a stroke.”[13]

Funding Ecology

21.  Three organisations dominate the UK broadcasting: the BBC, ITV and Sky.  They are each partly defined by their primary source of income – the licence fee, advertising revenues and subscriptions, respectively – and in turn by the interests and requirements of the relevant stakeholders. [14]

22.  C4 has been specifically designed to be different, in that it is primarily defined in terms of its output; independent of the way that it might be funded.

23.  C4 has been designed to coexist and cohabit pragmatically with the dominant organisations, and to challenge and complement them in terms of content, rather than to challenge them in terms of its scale, sales performance or financial results.  For C4, the latter are a means to an end, rather than the end itself.

24.  While the majority of C4’s revenues come from advertising, in the past it has also generated subscription revenues (from E4 and Film 4 before tactically moving away from this as part of its support for the Freeview platform) and from programme sales (before revising its terms of trade with its suppliers). How it has been funded has evolved and adapted gradually over time.

25.  Rather than being consumed with a debate about ownership and how Channel 4 is funded, and how steps might be taken to reform this, we should be more concerned about how the overall broadcasting ecology will develop in the future, and the importance of conserving the diversity and plurality of the content within it.  In this case, a significantly more ‘eco-friendly’ approach would be to focus on ensuring that C4 and its funding are able to continue to evolve and adapt on a more gradual basis, with its output being carefully monitored to ensure that C4 remains healthy and robust and in line with its remit.

26.  In 1980, a Conservative Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw was responsible for this radical intervention in broadcasting, the creation of Channel 4, of which he was immensely proud. It is a legacy for which he is still remembered. It would be sad if Whitelaw’s legacy and the channel’s diversity ethos were to be sacrificed, prematurely, for a mess of pottage.

April 2016