Wayne Garvie: C4’s in-house production plan is “ridiculous”

Sony’s Wayne Garvie has predicted Channel 4’s venture into production will fail and could be “potentially disastrous”.

The president of Sony Pictures Television’s International Production team told the Deloitte/Enders Media Telecoms 2025 and Beyond conference that the proposals outlined by the PSB are “ridiculous” and that the notion that it can become a meaningful source of revenue in the medium term is fanciful.

He said: “It won’t work. Those who run in-house or any production business know how difficult it is. The starting point is C4 doesn’t own IP and has no knowledge of how to run it [production]. It could be potentially disastrous given C4’s limited resources.”

Garvie said it will take focus away from what C4 has done successfully under outgoing chief exec Alex Mahon, which is transition for a digital future.

“Everyone in the production business knows you lose money for the first three years. If you hire really great people you might make money [after that] but not sizeable sums that will allow C4 to grow.

“It will have a very difficult birth… and might not last much longer than that.”

Instead, Garvie urged the incoming chair and chief executive at C4 to think about how it might best combines with the BBC, stating that the UK having four PSBs is “unsustainable”.

A few hours later at the same conference, C4 chief executive Alex Mahon responded briefly. She said she agrees with Garvie that launching in-house production will not be easy, and that is why it has outlined “modest” proposals. 

But she pushed back hard on the notion of merging PSBs, suggesting Garvie had “got a bit high on his own supply”. She said: “The PSBs need to work together more, and Freely is one of the best ways to do that - but people shouldn’t believe that by putting us all together that we’d have more impact.”