Channel 4: A History: from Big Brother to The Great British Bake Off

About the Book

This book covers a dramatic decade in the fortunes of Britain’s quirkiest broadcaster. It opens in 2009, with the realisation that Channel 4’s biggest money spinner, Big Brother, had become a toxic asset and would have to be discarded, at the same time as advertising revenues were shrinking in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.

Maggie Brown’s compelling narrative, which draws on interviews with key players in Channel 4’s story and unique access to the broadcaster’s archives, takes us inside the boardroom battles, changes in senior management and commissioning teams, interventions by the media regulator Ofcom, and the channel’s response to a rapidly-changing media and political landscape. Brown describes how the channel, under its new chief executive David Abraham, successfully fought off the threat of privatisation, which became a reality after the Conservatives’ general election victory in 2015. The price for remaining publicly funded was a substantial relocation of Channel 4’s operations, with Leeds announced in 2018 as a new ‘regional hub’.

The Channel 4 story is also one of ambitious and innovative programming, with a new director of content, Jay Hunt, instigating radical changes in commissioning and scheduling. Brown traces programming hits and losses during this period, with the departure to competitors of celebrity chefs, Black Mirror and Charlie Brooker, horse racing and Formula 1, and a reappraisal of the remit of institutions such as Channel 4 News and Film 4. But there were successes too, with the 2012 Paralympics helping to restore a public service sheen, and new programmes such as Gogglebox in 2013 connecting with younger audiences, and, in 2016, the coup of taking The Great British Bake Off from its home at the BBC.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. Alex Mahon and Ian Katz - New Brooms Appointed, and the Relocation Decision
2. No Escape From Big Brother’s Embrace Yet
3. Radio Adventure
4. The Rise of Fixed Rigs
5. Channel 4’s Online adventures 2007-2010
6. The Andy Duncan Sacking. Luke Johnson over ruled.
7. The David Abraham appointment
8. After Chucking Out Chintz, and Bidding For Channel Five
9. The Challenge as Abraham picks Jay
10. Jay Hunt in charge
11. Attack The Hunt - Advertising Revolt Foiled 2011-13/14
12. Gogglebox and Success, Factual and Onwards
13. Paralympics
14. Racing
15. Data 2010-2017 and how 4oD became All 4 but not all right.
16. Drama Hopes Dashed
17. Comedy and no Black Mirror
18. Film4
19. News
20. Current Affairs
21. Privatisation
22. 2016 – The Great British Bake Off snatch, the Hunt for CEO?
23. The Big Move North
24. Conclusion

About the Author :
Maggie Brown is one of the UK’s leading media writers. Her career includes contributing to The Guardian and Observer, helping to launch The Independent as its first media editor and writing A Licence to be Different: The Story of Channel 4, published in 2007, the history of its first 25 years. She lives in London and Wales, UK.

Review :
As enthralling as the best Channel 4 drama and as searching as the best of its documentaries, this is the definitive account of a unique British institution's difficult, dramatic second act. Maggie Brown has done it again. She has breathed life into years of complex negotiations and hugely difficult decisions that went on trying to keep Channel 4 intact in its original form against strong political and financial pressures. A major achievement, as well as a terrific read. It's an important record of the most turbulent time in the Channel's history. Everyone in British television talked to Maggie Brown and this account of the key years of Channel 4’s history is as thorough, detailed and meticulously reported as you would expect from her notebook. Told with her eye for juicy detail and ability to pick out the big narrative, it is as compelling for its revelations of the behind the scenes backstabbing as the onscreen drama. Whether you were there or not, Maggie saw and heard it all.