by Hannah Gannagé-Stewart, Broadcast

The former BBC director general issued his warning at an event held as part of the former Channel 4 deputy chair Lord Puttnam’s review of public service broadcasting.

“If you let private equity get anywhere near Channel 4, they will destroy it, I have no doubt about that,” he said.

…

He suggested C4 could be run as a ‘public good’ with any profit generated distributed back to programme-makers.

Enders Analysis head of TV Toby Syfret urged the industry not to forget about the broadcaster’s battle to remain in public hands amid the furore surrounding BBC charter review.   

“For heaven’s sake make this not just about the BBC but part of a wider debate,” he said. “I think in many ways Channel 4 is in a lot more trouble,” he said.

Read the article in full here

Watch the recording of the event, What would TV look like without the BBC? Funding the future of public service television held at the British Academy on Tuesday 15th December 2015. 

The BBC’s submission positions itself within the UK TV sector market, outlines its substantial and consistent contribution to the creative economy and identifies key challenges facing public service broadcasting in the 21st century. In order to secure a strong, open and independent BBC, the submission argues that PSB regulatory framework needs to be reformed, including enabling more effective access and prominence of the publicly-funded content. Read the BBC’s submission to the Inquiry here

The BBC as ‘a unique public sector cultural organisation’, according to John Ellis (Royal Holloway, University of London), and broadcasting is no longer the only way of carrying out its mission to inform, educate and entertain. ‘If the BBC genuinely believes that TV will migrate online – which after all is the rationale for BBC3 a a broadcast service’, Ellis argues, the next obvious stage is linking licence fee to i-Player and not broadcasting. Read Ellis’s five arguments about the BBC here

On 31 December 2016 the BBC’s Royal Charter will expire. What should the future for the BBC as a public service broadcaster look like in a fast-changing digital landscape? How should it be financially supported, and by whom? Should it continue to hold its place as the nation’s leading public service broadcaster, and benefit from a universal licence fee? Join us via live stream on Tuesday 15th December from 6 pm onwards which is available on our events page – as policymakers and practitioners take on this hotly debated topic to consider how this British institution should be funded.

Confirmed speakers:
Greg Dyke, former Director-General of the BBC (2000-4)
Brian Eno, musician and producer; delivered the BBC Music John Peel Lecture 2015
Professor Mariana Mazzucato, RM Phillips Professorship in the Economics of Innovation, University of Sussex
Toby Syfret, Head of TV, Enders Analysis

The event is chaired by Lord (David) Puttnam, former Deputy Chairman of Channel 4 (2006-12)

“The idea that young people are going to get to a certain age and automatically return to TV and linear scheduling is deeply misguided. The spread of young audiences across multiple content sources and delivery methods is set to increase as they get older. Social media is the EPG of the next generation and disengaging from the proprietary mind-set and spending more of the licence fee on shows that find the audience, wherever they may be, is the key to the BBC’s continued evolution.” Read the full article by Luke Hyams in Huffington Post.