Kelly Webb-Lamb to leave Channel 4

13 January 2021

Kelly Webb-Lamb, Channel 4’s Deputy Director of Programmes and Head of Popular Factual has today announced her decision to leave the broadcaster later this year.

During her five years at Channel 4 Kelly has worked alongside Ian Katz in realising the channel’s creative strategy, acted as commissioning lead for the 4 All the UK strategy and has been instrumental in the channel’s response to the Covid 19 pandemic. She leaves the broadcaster in excellent creative and commercial heath, with record growth in young viewing and All 4 streaming during 2020. The main channel ended the year with linear share up + 3%, 16-34s share up +8% and All 4 viewing up a massive +31%.
 

In her three years as Deputy Director of Programmes, Kelly has overseen the popular factual commissioning departments responsible for over 1000 hours of programming every year - from the launch, and continued success, of C4's version of The Great British Bake Off to Gogglebox, Hunted and a ream of other creative successes including The Circle which will return soon for a third series. Other award-winning and nominated shows include: Celebrity Gogglebox; The British Tribe Next Door; Old People’s Home For 4 Year Olds; Joe Lycett's Got Your Back; Kathy Burke's All Woman and The Restaurant that Makes Mistakes.
 

Kelly is passionate about creative diversity and has worked with the creative diversity and commissioning teams across the channel to develop new diverse talent into mainstream stars, as well as driving change on social mobility. She spearheaded the channel's response to the global Black Lives Matter movement with the upcoming The Black Takeover project - an ambitious and disruptive intervention to drive significant and sustainable change and she will continue to oversee the project which will launch a number of new shows across the genres, and showcase a roster of new and established Black talent on and off-screen. She has also been responsible for overseeing the channel’s search for the next innovative, channel-defining formats that will be funded from a contestable pot. Kelly will remain in post full time until the summer and then on a part time basis into the autumn to ensure delivery of these key projects.
 

Kelly said; “Channel 4 is a very special place; quite possibly the most special place in the industry. There's nowhere I've worked where your staff-pass says freedom, creativity and risk quite as loudly.  It is therefore very hard to leave. But after five years and a whole load of change, the channel is now in a really strong place creatively, and I am super proud of what we've achieved. So it's a good time for me to take the leap and say goodbye - new adventures are beckoning.  I will miss my colleagues painfully much - even though I haven't seen most of them in person for almost a year - they are the best commissioning team you could ever hope for.  But I'll be around for a good while yet. On Zoom, at least...”
 

Director of Programmes Ian Katz said: “Kelly has played a huge part in shaping Channel 4 over the last five years and been a wise, generous and creatively inspiring partner for the last three. She is one of the most formidable people I’ve ever worked with, as mischievous as she is ferociously clever and passionate about what Channel 4 can and should be. She has a remarkable ability to make any show better, whatever the genre, and many of our most successful shows, from Old Age Home for 4 Year Olds to the Circle, bear her creative fingerprints. We’ll all miss her hugely but I’m enormously grateful for everything she has done for the channel, and delighted that she’s agreed to stick around till the summer to complete perhaps her most ambitious project yet, the Black Takeover of the schedule.”

 

Ends.