Page 343 - Broadcaster News Today

Whats french for partygate? its partygate! well, there you go. we will come back to that later, no doubt. but first, lets start the show with the story of channel 4. last week, the culture secretary, nadine dorries, announced that government ownership is holding channel 4 back and put forward plans to sell the broadcaster. cue an outcry from some public figures and even some of the governments own backbenchers. with me is chris curtis, editor in chief of broadcast, whos been following the story....

Its peers and rivals wouldnt order. now, you can debate the extent to which that ethos is is carried out. and, you know, you can look through the schedule and probably find some channel 4 shows which are pretty similar. but ultimately, you know, it is a broadcaster, that over the decades for a0 years now, has ordered different types of shows. theres no certainty that a privatised channel 4 would continue in that way because, ultimately, if profit is driving your decision—making process, youre ...

Discovery organisation, which has been increasingly... discovery for the last or five or ten years, has been really getting into free to air television. theyre going to team up with bt sport in the not too distant future as well, so theres quite a powerful potential player emerging there. im sure lots of american studios will will take a look. probably not the streamers, though. it doesnt quite chime with a with a streamer strategy, a linear broadcaster like channel 4. i mean, i saw that had bee...

Going to the national public broadcaster, it was going to other places. that was widely seen as an attack on the independence of the broadcaster, actually, by making it more reliant on tax money, which can be easily cut, and less able to guarantee its funding and to carry out independent journalism. so, you know, macron may be doing this as a vote winner, but actually, whenever politicians say we need to replace the licence fee with something else, we need to be very wary about what their intent...

The bbc traditionally has been very defensive, and understandably so, about the licence fee and independence from government is absolutely crucial to its future. but if it becomes so wedded to the licence fee that it isnt prepared to engage in conversations about alternative funding measures, then theres a danger that it becomes a binary argument and it could get seriously walloped as and when the licence fee is ultimately replaced. and i think whats happening now is potentially a shift, where t...

Services in the uk in the first three months of this year — this was outweighed byi point 51 million cancellations, with more than half a million of those attributed to "money saving". lets speak to the tv critic and broadcaster scott bryan. how do you see this? is this all about people tightening their belts? there are a combination of factors here. of course, the cost of living has been in peoples minds and the fact that streaming services have increased their prices. netflix has increased t...

Discovery for the last or five or ten years, has been really getting into free to air television. theyre going to team up with bt sport in the not too distant future as well, so theres quite a powerful potential player emerging there. im sure lots of american studios will will take a look. probably not the streamers, though. it doesnt quite chime with a with a streamer strategy, a linear broadcaster like channel 4. i mean, i saw that had been valued anything between 500 million and 1 billion, de...

And, you know, you can look through the schedule and probably find some channel 4 shows which are pretty similar. but ultimately, you know, it is a broadcaster, that over the decades for a0 years now, has ordered different types of shows. theres no certainty that a privatised channel 4 would continue in that way because, ultimately, if profit is driving your decision—making process, youre going to view ideas through a different prism. and what happens next? just briefly, you know, is there a c...

And independence from government is absolutely crucial to its future. but if it becomes so wedded to the licence fee that it isnt prepared to engage in conversations about alternative funding measures, then theres a danger that it becomes a binary argument and it could get seriously walloped as and when the licence fee is ultimately replaced. and i think whats happening now is potentially a shift, where these organisations need to start grappling with a more progressive method of payment, one th...

Said he would do away with their equivalent of the licence fee. just tell us a bit more about that, because thats obviously very interesting and topicalfor us here, too. well, this is something that macron has said, and hes not alone in saying this. all across europe, politicians are playing with this idea because the licence fee is seen as an unfairtax by a lot of people. and actually, nowadays its unenforceable. the republic of ireland at the moment is having huge problems enforcing its licenc...