Channel 4 and Northern Ireland

[Stuart Cosgrove]

This thread tries to identify opportunties and challenges within a Nothern Ireland context. Views, proposals and opinions are most welcome

Channel 4 believes it has underperformed in the smaller UK nations and specifically in Northern Ireland. Whilst there are a range of historic reasons for those failures Channel 4 is ambitious to substantially improve its performance in its production spend in the smaller UK nations, whilst also seeking to secure a funding settlement for Channel 4’s future.

Northern Ireland poses a range of challenges and opportunities, some familiar others harder to fathom and explain. In circumstances where progress is slow, it is tempting to apportion blame – the TV production sector blaming Channel 4 for not fulfilling its ‘duties’, whilst the London-based commissioning culture and system, has implied that Northern Ireland ‘lacks scale and quality of ideas’. Blame has helped neither party.

Channel 4 has done nothing 'wrong' although in this respect it is clearly not right either. To date Channel 4 has not failed to deliver on any of its Tier 1 PSB obligations and has in fact over-shot what are in effect generalised and intra-competitive nations and regions targets, which have been broaldy described as "out of London" .

There are no specific production targets for Northern Ireland but there is a broader representational requirement to "reflect diversity across the UK". It is almost certainly the case that these obligations are not sufficiently nuanced but that is a regulatory and policy issue, which does not alone resolve the challenges.

What is equally clear is that the Northern Ireland production sector continues to grow, diversify and strengthen, and it is entirely probable that perceptions of the talent and sector are outmoded, prejudicial and plain wrong. It is equally the case that communicating the values of the NI sector has not yet 'reached' London. That would be equally true of the BBC.

It would seem that both sources of ‘blame’ are wrestling with misconceptions.

Channel 4 believes that, alongside other providers such as the BBC, UTV and RTE, it can play a significant role in supporting and developing the creative economy in Northern Ireland withn an all-Ireland market. It may be that there needs to be a greater alignment of PSB broadcaster strategies and public policy but market conditions imply that Channel 4 alone does not have the scale to grow and sustain significant creative clusters across the nations and regions of the UK. Nor in the current recession is it feasible that more new money will be available. It may also be the case that digital media and TV production have different 'narratives'.

Channel 4 has looked at ways in which we can expand upon previous announcements and grow the production sectors of the devolved nations even further but this is neither simple nor replicable across the nations and regions.

In Next on 4, we committed to increase the proportion of our television spend in the nations by more than 50% by 2012 (2.85% of total programming spend in 2012) and has increased those again in 2009 in line with new targets agreed with Ofcom.

Senior Channel 4 staff, including the CEO Andy Duncan is on record acknowledging that this places Northern Ireland in an anomalous position, committing to double activity from a low base is not an answer.

The Northern Ireland response to Ofcom called for a realignment of commissioning to deliver, for example, a series in Northern Ireland to work towards that. Series commisiioning is an 18-24 month cycle usually pilot commisioning. So in reponse Channel 4 has established a nation’s pilot fund of £1 million to address the lack of series based critical-mass in the production sector in the smaller nations. These pilots are intended to encourage series production in 2010. So far take-up has been low from Belfast companies; only two companies have submitted qualifying projects in the six months since the fund was announced.

That said, we anticipate that this move will increase our investment in the nations by several million pounds, as well as significantly building the production capacity in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

In addition to the pilot fund, we recently announced that we will specifically ring-fence slots for companies in the nations in all of our key programming strands—including Dispatches, Cutting Edge, Comedy Labs, Comedy Showcases and our religious strand. Disappointingly the level of ideas to these strands from Northern Ireland remains very low and has not significantly increased either.

New ways of addressing this disconnect between sector and broadcaster is a matter of some importance for both Channel 4 and the independent TV community. Despite all the hard work on both sides progress is still slow.

In the case of digital media we are facing a new era working together. We have announced a number of new commitments, via the 4iP fund, where Northern Ireland and Scotland have dedicated funding and where regular commisioner meetings, and contact via informal networks like Digital Circle, Belfast Barcamp and 38minutes has raised confidence of improved deal-flow.

Northern Ireland has been a willing and consistent partner at the level of Screen Agency Support via Northern Ireland Screen. This has taken the shape of funding for high profile projects in film such as Hunger (seee above), documentary, short film and more recently digital media. There has also been consistent commitment over several years to jointly-funded activity in new and entry-level talent development. Northern Ireland Screen has been among the best supporters of some of Channel 4's initiatives.

However, Channel 4 has had less success than it has enjoyed in Scotland, the North West of England, West Midlands and South West of England in securing the deeper strategic investment and support from economic development agencies than we have in Northern Ireland. Whilst it is not Channel 4's role or position to determine policy or priority in this area, our greatest success has been in those nations and regions where that support has been clear and consistent.

In its response to Ofcom’s PSB consultations various parties argued for a refined competitive funding model for PSB as articulated in Option 3 of Ofcom's PSB Review. Whilst Channel 4 has been invited to engage in creating a bigger PSB entity possible through joint-ventures, and also test a 'go-it-alone' model, we would not disagree with the ambition of a contestable fudn, and would be likely participants with others in any such fund.

Channel 4 looks forward to maintaining and strengthening relationships in the future especially in areas of returning production, new platform development and high profile projects.

I’d welcome comments, criticisms and realisable suggestions from anyone interested in these issues and debates and offer up these thoughts as a way of framing debate. I for one feel a sense of daja-vu about regulatory reports, submissions and processes, and now want to hear the personal views of friends, colleagues and companies in Northern Ireland.

Over to you

Stuart Cosgrove
Channel 4

[Stuart Cosgrove]

Northern Ireland Committee

A new inquiry into TV brodcasting in Northern Ireland has been announced:

The Committee is to carry out a short inquiry into the future of television broadcasting in Northern Ireland, focusing on the role of public service broadcasting, digital switchover, the role of local news, current affairs and other programming, and the place of broadcasting in a devolved nation of the UK.

The Committee invites any individual or organisation with an interest in this matter to submit written evidence in accordance with the guidelines stated below:
Each submission should:

. be no more than 3,000 words in length;
. have numbered paragraphs; and
. be in Word format or a rich text format with as little use of colour or logos as possible.

A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to [e-mail] marked "Television Broadcasting in Northern Ireland" and should arrive by Friday 1 May 2009.
If you wish to submit a paper copy, in addition to the electronic version, it should be sent to:
The Clerk of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

House of Commons
7 Millbank
London
SW1P 3JA

Further information:
Committee Membership is as follows: Sir Patrick Cormack MP (Chairman) (Conservative, South Staffordshire), Mr David Anderson MP (Labour, Blaydon), Rosie Cooper MP (Labour, West Lancashire), Mr Christopher Fraser MP (Conservative, South West Norfolk), Mr John Grogan MP (Labour, Selby), Mr Stephen Hepburn MP (Labour, Jarrow), Lady Hermon MP (Ulster Unionist Party, North Down), Kate Hoey MP (Labour, Vauxhall), Dr Alasdair McDonnell MP (SDLP, Belfast South), Mr Denis Murphy MP (Labour, Wansbeck), Stephen Pound MP (Labour, Ealing North), Mrs Iris Robinson MP (Democratic Unionist Party, Strangford), David Simpson MP (Democratic Unionist Party, Upper Bann).

Specific Committee Information: The Committee intends to publish the transcript of these meetings on its Homepage approximately two weeks after the meeting. For further information about the work of the Committee, please contact Emma McIntosh, Assistant to the Committee, on 020 7219 2173 or e-mail [e-mail]
Committee Website: www.parliament.uk/niacom

[Una Murphy]

This could be a very interesting hearing - broadcasting is not a devolved matter in Northern Ireland but local politicians recently debated job losses at UTV so it is topical

[Matt Johnston]

Hi Una,
How about we get some of the indies and Digital Circle in a room to have a chat about this in the next week prior to the deadline obviously.

[Una Murphy]

Hi Mat,

I would be happy to help organise - let me know what date you are thinking about.

[Matt Johnston]

Wednesday 15th? Earlier?
I can book a room in InvestNI probably :) We should also talk to NIScreen (I've emailed Elsie)

[Una Murphy]

Wednesday 15th is good for me. I wonder should we also look at the DCMS inquiry into the future of local and regional media?

[Matt Johnston]

Una - can you help round up some of the indies?

DC folk are already meeting NIMIC and doing a Web2Expo debrief on the 15th so will check if that date suits.

[Darryl Collins]

Matt Johnston said:

Una - can you help round up some of the indies?

DC folk are already meeting NIMIC and doing a Web2Expo debrief on the 15th so will check if that date suits.

When and where is that debriefing? Is it going to be written up/blogged for those unable to attend?

[Matt Johnston]

Paul and Paul from FRONT, plus likely Andy McMillan and Kevin Traynor will hopefully be doing a public debrief. The guys are only back from Web2 so I've not yet confirmed time/dates with them. Davy is also going to do a podcast IIRC.

More details as soon as I know them.

[Darryl Collins]

Matt Johnston said:

Paul and Paul from FRONT, plus likely Andy McMillan and Kevin Traynor will hopefully be doing a public debrief. The guys are only back from Web2 so I've not yet confirmed time/dates with them. Davy is also going to do a podcast IIRC.

More details as soon as I know them.

Thanks Matt. I like the idea of the podcast - look forward to hearing it if I don't get along to a public gathering. BTW is there a list of who attended? Wouldn't it be nice to see Invest NI's report on the event too? ;-)

[Matt Johnston]

I've asked the Q of InvestNI.
I'm also meeting some attendees this week to see if they'll talk on the 15th (and asked the DCSG if they'll sort out a venue etc)

[Stuart Cosgrove]

The submissions including several critical of PSB's such as Channel 4 are avaiklable on this link:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmniaf/m...