The government’s stale plans for the broadcaster should be rejected in favour of cherishing it as a risk-taker
What’s the subplot with the government’s latest flirtation with the idea of privatising Channel 4? There was a clue, possibly, in the view expressed this week by Tory MP Andrew Griffith, who has clout in these matters since he was a long-serving finance director of Sky.
In a column in the Telegraph, Griffith complained about how parochial UK competition regulators have stymied growth in the sector, missed the rise of on-demand streaming and failed to understand that UK-based TV players need scale to compete with the Americans. Specifically on Channel 4, he said: “Its next, and most enduring, contribution to the UK media landscape may be to keep some of its distinctive remit but as part of adding useful scale to another UK-based operator.”
