Channel Four

Channel Four
Launched	November 2, 1982
Owned by	C4 Inc.
Picture format	PAL
Country	United Kingdom Isle of Man Channel Islands Republic of Ireland
Language	English Manx
Broadcast area	Nationwide

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Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the state-owned C4 Authority. It is publicly owned but unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded entirely by its own commercial activities, including publicity.

History

Before Channel 4 was ultimately born, Britain had three terrestrial television services (BBC1, ITV, BBC2). The Broadcasting Act 1980, began the process of adding a fourth; Channel 4 was formally created, along with its Welsh counterpart, by an act of Parliament in 1982. After some months of test broadcasts, It began scheduled transmissions on 2 November 1982. The notion of a second commercial broadcaster in the United Kingdom had been around since the inception of ITV in 1954 and its subsequent launch in 1955; the idea of an "ITV2" was long expected and pushed for. Additionally, some television sets (sold at that time) often had a spare tuning button labelled "ITV2".

Wales

At the time the fourth service was being considered, a movement in Wales lobbied for the creation of dedicated service that would air Welsh language programmes, then only catered for at "off peak" times on BBC Wales and HTV. The campaign was taken so seriously by Gwynfor Evans, former president of Plaid Cymru, that he threatened the government with a hunger strike were it not to honour the plans. The result was that Channel 4 as seen by the rest of the United Kingdom would be replaced in Wales by Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4C).

Operated by a specially created authority, S4C would air programmes in Welsh made by HTV, the BBC and independent companies. Initially limited frequency space meant that Channel 4 could not be broadcast alongside S4C, though some Channel 4 programmes would be aired at less popular times on the Welsh variant; this practice continued until the closure of S4C's analogue transmissions in 2010, at which time S4C became a fully Welsh channel. With this conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital terrestrial broadcasting on 31 March 2010, Channel 4 became a UK-wide television channel for the first time.

Revamp

In 2020, Charles Okra become managing director of Channel 4 and set about overhauling the channel due to previous attempts being made with the intention of privatizing the channel. Okra revamped the staff and then recruited Cody Taylor to become Controller of C4, with the role effective from 1 September 2021 (the first time that corporation had recruited someone outside of its authority), replacing Carlos Heart.

The first major overhaul was to axe the unpopular Sixty Affairs programme; this was a replacement for the news and magazine show National. Its replacement was the Four Politics, a straight politics programme in a bid to shore up its failing early evening slot. The Miss Great Britain contest was also dropped, being described as verging on the too offensive after the January 2022 contest, with Four Weddings and Naked Attractions also being cancelled.

On 18 October 2022, Channel Four was relaunched with an extensive similar, but modified look onto the channel. It was accompanied by new programming including Logan, Sesame Street, Westward and a revised schedule to help streamline and maintain viewers throughout the course of the evening. Taylor started to gear most programmes to either on the hour or half past the hour, while Paranormal and Omnitech were both moved after the national news. Cody Taylor was also determined to end the dated and inept Channel Four scheduling which was hampering the channel and holding back good programmes.

On 27 February 2022, Countdown was placed on an 18-month hiatus. Channel Four originally planned to axe the series as they wished to spend its budgets on new programming for the channel, but was forced to back down from public pressure and it eventually returned within September 2023. Although both Cody Taylor and Owen Raynham were originally blamed for the decision (both Taylor and Brooke Morelli were the targets of death threats), It was later revealed that the decision was taken due to the series needing an format restructuring, making it impossible to find anyone (at the time) who knew what to do with the series.

On 9 September 2022, the long-standing children's programming block was overhauled and rebranded as CH4 Kids, which gave it dedicated idents for the first time and had a live in-vision presenter, similar to other rival channels and their programming block. On 23 May 2023, long-running lunchtime magazine drama Pebble Mall was broadcast for the last time after being on air for 14 years. On 27 October 2023, Channel Four launched its daytime television schedules.

Staff

• Directors: Alan Littler, Alex Neekilappappy, Anthony Bianco, Beverly Omere, Cody Taylor, Collin Rosales, Corrado Santacroce, Diana Agostino, Donald Iheonu, Elijah Odjokoh, Evan Ledda, Fitsum Gebrekirstos, Fiona Yohanns, Hailey Cordner, James Rzeznik, Jay Costea, Jhaleya Black, Johnny A. Serber, Junjie Xiong, Kezya Seko, Laurice Viscarra, Melissa Dinha, Michelle Agostino, Mischa Mallari, Oreo Nahid, Peter Grosdanof, Phillip Semanic, Praveen Srisegar, Ryan Taumi, Sameer Nadeem, Shaheem Hutchinson, Shayle Valentine, Sofia Drusian, Thomas Faween, Yannick Newell

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