Channel 4 has poured cold water on government proposals to relocate from its Horseferry Road headquarters to Birmingham, arguing it is already sufficiently active outside of the capital.
Giving evidence to the culture, media and sport committee on Wednesday, chairman Charles Gurassa and chief executive David Abraham dismissed the spectre of relocation in response to questions from MPs.
Culture secretary John Whittingdale hinted that he was weighing up a sale of C4’s HQ, estimated to be worth £100m, in front of the committee at a hearing yesterday but Gurassa hit back at the plan to bolster its regional presence – pointing to existing bases in Manchester and Glasgow.
“We’re not 100% based in Horseferry Road,” he said. “Where we’ve seen new opportunities, for example in video games, we’ve opened a facility in Glasgow – a thriving and digital economy. We’ve also got an operation in Manchester.”
He said just “two things” were left in London - C4’s sales force and commissioning team.
“For our sales force – their customers are in London, mainly Soho. That’s where they do business. Our commissioners – if I look across the creative spectrum, they’re all in the London area. That’s where we make the biggest contribution.”
While Gurassa said the broadcaster had received “no pressure” from the government over the proposals, he admitted that the speculation had led to C4 receiving invitations from cities around the country.
“We’ve been written to by various mayors of various cities telling me why their city is a great city and why we should relocate there,” he said.
Abraham rejected the idea, arguing that rental costs would directly impact the broadcaster’s programming budget.
“We own our own building, what would be rental costs is going on our programmes,” he said. “These are quite punchy issues that we could definitely need to look at if this is something that is pursued down the line.”
He pointed to programming including Maverick Televison’s Embarrassing Bodies, North One Television’s Speed with Guy Martin and 7 Wonder’s My Kitchen Rules, which have been made in Birmingham, but admitted more needed to be done.
“We are working hard to get back to where it should and could be,” he said.
Terms of trade
Abraham played down Whittingdale’s decision to make no change to terms of trade after C4 lobbied aggressively to introduce a “sliding scale” structure, with indies qualifying based on their size as well as their ownership.
He claimed that C4’s proposals were “modest” and argued that the broadcaster’s submission was “simply observing that the industry is in a very different shape than it was 25 years ago”.
“We recognise the secretary of state has conducted an extensive review and [he concluded] that absolutely no change is required. We have to now live with the continuation of the regime.” he said.
“It’s 12 years old and didn’t envisage the digital complications that we’re now living with but we will continue to engage with the industry and Pact on developing great businesses together.”
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