C4's Duncan: UK TV needs "reboot"

Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan has called on the government to "reboot and reconfigure" Britain's broadcasting system and dismissed suggestions that the channel merge with Five.

Speaking at an event organised by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Duncan said that the imminent publication of the government's Digital Britain action plan is essential for the creative industries to be able to contribute to economic recovery.

"The scale and nature of change being brought about by digital technology is fundamental, it is global and it is irreversible," said Duncan. "The established economic model is inevitably in decay. But, just as the door is progressively closing on the old linear model of one-to-many broadcasting, a new and much bigger door is opening on the global content market. If we seek to approach the challenges of the
future with the solutions of the past, we commit Britain's creative and media industry to decline. If we understand and embrace change and create the right structures for the future, we open the way to major social, cultural and economic benefit for all in our country."

Duncan warned that Britain's commercial public service broadcasting system was broken because "the UK domestic advertising market on its own can no longer sustain the flow of high quality TV content that British viewers have enjoyed for the last half-century", and cautioned that in the move to online the UK should ensure that "the bulk of the ad revenues" not simply be allowed to go "straight back to the US" as "very little... finds its way into UK content production".

He dismissed BBC director general Mark Thompson's suggestion that Channel 4 merge with Five as "trying to fix the problems of the future with the solutions of the past".

"It makes no sense whatsoever to imagine that merging a not-for-profit publicly owned broadcast business with a for-profit, privately owned broadcaster is going to solve the fundamental structural problems we are all facing," he added. "Mixing oil and water doesn't work. It just makes a mess."