Channel 4 Statement: The IT Crowd: The Speech
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The following is Channel 4’s response to correspondence regarding the decision to remove an episode of The IT Crowd from our online streaming service.
We can confirm that Channel 4 has removed The IT Crowd episode ‘The Speech’ from our platforms. We reviewed the episode in accordance with the principles of our historic content review (found here: www.channel4.com/corporate/historic-content-review-principles) and in light of current audience expectations, not as a result of recent media coverage or any personal views expressed by the writer, Graham Linehan.
Channel 4 is committed to maintaining the greatest possible freedom of creative expression and has, throughout its history, made challenging and controversial programmes that provoke strong feelings. We believe that our All 4 archive is also a valuable historical record of our output and of the changing society of which we are a part.
In carefully reviewing the principles governing how we handle historic programmes across our platforms, our general approach has been to preserve the All 4 archive, adding warnings or making small edits as appropriate. However, after reviewing this particular episode in light of current audience expectations, we concluded it did not meet our standards for remaining available on All 4 and it was not possible to make adequate changes, and therefore it was removed.
Viewer Enquiries will not respond to individual correspondence, but all correspondence received will be logged for the information of those responsible for our programming.