The Government intends to privatise Channel 4 through its forthcoming Media Bill.

Given the uncertainty of the investment in Channel 4 and the limited upside from advertising, the only likely buyers are other broadcasters.    

There are potential costs to the UK if the unique programming output of Channel 4 is lost and in the reduced funding of the independent production sector.

There are just under eight million adults in the UK who only have access to free-to-air television, relying on it as a vital source of entertainment, information and company

These viewers watch much more television, and depend heavily upon the diversity and quality of content delivered by the BBC and other public service broadcasters

Without further support for PSB content in all genres, for all audiences, there is a risk of leaving millions of people out of ever-rarer shared cultural conversations, speeding up feedback loops of viewer decline, and losing the core public value in the ecosystem as a whole

One response to the growth of the satellite and cable households has been for terrestrial broadcasters to launch their own digital channels. These channels are beginning to absorb significant fractions of the total programming budget and in this report we look at the implications for the parent broadcasters. We examine E4, Channel 4’s main satellite entertainment channel, showing that it is likely to remain a drain on the parent for many years to come. Rather than ‘strengthening the brand’ of terrestrial broadcasters, which is the reason normally given for diversification into satellite channels, our research shows that E4 and other services do nothing for the parent company and divert programming expenditure that would otherwise be usefully spent on the terrestrial service.