Channel 4 at 30, by David Abraham

25 August 2012

Channel 4 at 30: Introductory remarks by David Abraham for a discussion with Michael Jackson at the Edinburgh TV Festival 2012

For a generation that has always lived with digital TV, the internet and mobile, it is difficult to comprehend the impact that the arrival of Channel 4 had on those, like me, who were teenagers in 1982. I'd grown up with a paternalistic form of television at the centre of my life. But as I went through adolescence, it seemed increasingly disconnected from the world around me - a more angular world of punk, drugs, Thatcher, The Falklands war and mass youth unemployment.

Into my world arrived Channel 4 and from the first night it was clear that those like Anthony Smith and Michael, who had lobbied Channel 4 into existence, had succeeded in creating a space in all our lives that felt both different and more in tune with the world we were experiencing. This wonderfully contemporary, messy creation spoke with a powerful and authentic voice. It felt both entertaining and serious - it had a sense of mission but also mischief. For a second time in my lifetime, TV was going from black and white into colour.

Rebellion was part of what I liked about Channel 4 - but rebellion of a quite focused kind- it had the courage to address issues and say things in a way that I simply had not seen on TV before. The post-war world we'd grown up in still seemed hemmed in by so many taboos and cultural hierarchies. But Channel 4, with shows like Walter and Comic Strip, was prepared, indeed compelled from its very first night, via its remit, to challenge them in creative and iconoclastic ways.

What I did not know at the time is that this creative edge sprang from a very enlightened and entrepreneurial approach towards how the shows were actually made. In 1982, the creation of Channel 4 quite simply liberated the means of production from the duopoly of the BBC and ITV. That's what drove the diversity of the schedule and of the points of view within the programmes.  Channel 4 felt like it had a knack of nurturing talent, ideas and ways of seeing that were bubbling away at the boarders of society and bringing them centre stage. In a very real sense it seemed to accelerate that thing which I felt, as the child of post war immigrants - was central to the way that British society had always progressed - in that it had always been open to new ideas - to difference - to cultural progress.

This is why for me, running Channel 4 is one of the most special jobs in the world. My passionately held belief is that everything which Channel 4 does well remains as important now as it was thirty years ago - in spite of all the changes that have occurred in the world around us and in the broadcasting landscape since: despite multichannel, the WOCC, the terms of trade, despite Sky and Virgin and the rise of the Superindie. Let me explain why.

One of the greatest strengths of British culture is that it is in constant flux - illustrated wonderfully by Danny's Boyle's Olympic Opening - a diverse, chaotic world unified by a quirkiness and permissiveness and an enduring creativity. Created by a man whose films were nurtured by Film 4 from Shallow Grave and Trainspotting to Slumdog Millionaire.

To capture the flux takes both a certain kind of intellectual rebellion (so as to sit outside mainstream thought) - and an appetite for risk. A remit that compels you to do it helps too. Many taboos may have been broken since 1982 but new, more pervasive challenges constantly confront the lives of every new generation. To take just one example, on-line deception and cruelty, the subject of several stunning, recent True Stories for example, was unheard of in Michael Grade's day.

In a moment you will see a video montage of thirty years of Channel 4. I'm terrifically proud of the quality of ideas that have emerged in this early post Big Brother era. I cannot think of a more subversive and challenging set of contemporary dramas on British television in the past twelve months than Charlie Brooker's award winning Black Mirror trilogy- which dared to confront celebrity television, politics and the internet with a potency that matches anything in Channel 4's history. Or any movie that could equal Steve McQueen's Shame for its power in addressing the modern day problem of addiction. Or anything recently said about contemporary British taste and art more intelligent than Grayson Perry. Or any broadcaster in the world who would do what we are about to do tomorrow night - to broadcast a live all night DJ set into our viewers living rooms. Or any major network that still covers as much in depth award-winning international news in primetime as Channel 4 news.

Since the last Edinburgh TV Festival, Channel 4 has also boldly brought large audiences to fresh issues such as the crisis of multiculturalism in Make Bradford British, mental health in the workplace in the Channel 4 Goes Mad season, community banking in Bank of Dave, disabled dating in The Undateables, and trans-gender lives in My Transsexual Summer. The forthcoming Paralympic Games will, we hope, create a new and wider audience for Paralympic sports and a lasting legacy in terms of public attitudes. This is not, as some might argue, political correctness for its own sake, this is about directing the creative potential of television towards stimulating progress and change.

Channel 4 is today navigating through the toughest and longest recession in its history. That's why this autumn we are dedicating several big blocks of programming towards youth employment. And addressing how the modern state gets captured by corporatism.

This is kind of programming matters to me. I spoke earlier about the cultural duopoly of the 60's and 70's that Channel 4 helped to break up. Today, in the midst of this long recession, we might have a subtler but no less pervasive kind of duopoly emerging - that of integrated technology and content platforms confronting centrally controlled state-funded broadcasting - or voluntary pay TV vs involuntary as it could be described. Channel 4, with its independence, its commitment to its remit, its peerless brand attributes and its £600m content budget, is here to guard against the power of such a duopoly.

Television as a medium fails to achieve its potential for real cultural impact when, for example, it's either nostalgia on a mass scale (as so much mainstream TV remains) or it's reaching only tiny audiences at a time (as with so much original digital content). Proliferation of channel and platform choice has led, if anything, to more of the same, rather than a variety of ideas in television. Fragmentation of audiences combined with the binding of platform and content ownership risks stifling the transmission of new ideas rather than strengthening it.  The eco-system still needs a creative counterweight and that counterweight is C4.   A place that will be a source of inspiration and guidance in a world characterized by economic turmoil and profound societal change, as well as an oasis of raucous escapism such as the Funny Fortnight currently on air.

This is also one reason why Jay Hunt and I have redoubled our efforts over the past two years to engage with as wide a range of creative partners from throughout the UK and from as many new sectors of the creative economy as possible. We believe that diversity of supply is one of the best guarantors of diversity of thought.  Tomorrow, for example, Jay and the commissioning team will be throwing open the doors at a speed dating session.

One of the other many wonders of the Channel 4 model is that our independence comes from the fact that our content is funded by advertisers who value the quality and uniqueness of the editorial environment that we provide to them. And now, technology increasingly connects brand owners directly to their customers. To respond to this we have re-engineered our approach to adsales - moving away from a less relevant and singular focus on share and towards accurately valuing engagement and outcome. This is not some theoretical dream. This is happening today, it plays to our natural strengths and is generating significant new opportunities for Channel 4.  At the heart of our approach is a new viewing relationship platform which in 18 months has already attracted five million individually identified viewers actively engaging with Channel 4 and its products - of which there are an increasing number - whether 4OD, 4seven, Scrapbook, or our suite of award-winning content-related applications such as MPDL, Sexperience, and Dispatches. In the process, we have been blending our skills as content commissioners with those of product developers.

To focus the value of these experiences we have also recruited a new team of data analysts from outside broadcasting who are now busy mapping audiences using powerful tools unavailable to us 5 years ago. The platform will provide us with ever-deeper creative insights into how viewers engage with different parts of our genre offering and help us to shape ever more personalized and refined experiences both for them, for producers and advertisers.

My vision is that this new engagement layer will ultimately form the basis of a renewed civic engagement with pubic service broadcasting in the 21st century. Not as Michael once feared, a ‘ju ju stick' with which to defend a position of undoubted privilege - but a revolutionary way to focus viewer engagement to directly support a particular breed of British originality and creative endeavour  - to continue take the risks that others dare not take. All funded via the natural affinity of the audience towards the 4 brand - rather than through restrictive pay walls or the threat of criminal fines. By harnessing the potential of connected TV environment in the way we have begun to do, we plan for this deeper message to become part of everything that reinforces and expands the public's understanding of why we are here and what we are for - a creative agent of change as potent in the next 30 years as it has so often been until now.