Studying Channel 4 is a possibility at A-Level rather than the certainty it is at GCSE. This post was originally written with the GCSE group in mind. GCSE pupils must read this post. A-Level pupils can if studying a television programme by Channel 4 as most of the information in it will still be useful to you. It is imperative when studying both Friends and The IT Crowd that you understand what the Channel 4 Corporation is, how it operates and why it operates in the way that it does. You could well be asked about it in the exam. I would envisage a question similar to this if it did happen:
Media Industries
4. Explain why TV comedy shows are important to the television industry. Refer to Friends and The IT Crowd to support your response. [10]
A key part of your answer will be your knowledge of Channel 4 Corporation, its relationship with Friends and The IT Crowd and an understanding of why it ended up choosing to syndicate those shows. We'll deal with Channel 4 Corporation itself in this post and then there will be a follow up post explaining why they chose the two sitcoms...
When people say 'Channel 4' we think most commonly of the actual channel on our televisions, usually accessed by tapping '4' or '104' on our remotes - and it's in that channel that the Corporation had its origins. The original fourth TV channel went live in 1982 (hence some adults regaling you with tales of when TV had just three channels, BBC1, BBC2 and ITV!)
Even in its early days, the channel was launched on a clear platform of being different, positioning itself very much as a channel to appeal to the fringe and those outside the mainstream. As of November 2019, Channel 4's Corporate website (which you will be looking at in a lesson soon, but by all means take a look now) promises:
The BBC is primarily funded by the TV Licence paid for by the public. It brings in £3.5bn a year - and that rather large sum of money must be accounted for. BBC's Points of View then allows viewers just like you or I to write in and complain that we don't feel our money has been well spent. If we feel any broadcasting codes have been broken, we can get the BBC into serious trouble by reporting them to the UK's regulator, The Office of Communications or 'Ofcom'. Accordingly, that leaves the BBC less able to take creative risks and leaves it duty bound to represent the 'typical' fee payer and their interests to avoid such complaint. Political change and challenge is therefore right out, and one of the BBC's key tenets (dating all the way back to its origins as a radio station in the 1920s) is a lack of political affiliation, although it has been challenged many times down the years on this basis.
ITV, meanwhile, being funded by advertisers' and shareholders' money, has a need to create programming that has mass market appeal to draw in viewers from the core, not the fringe. In the Saturday night primetime slot of 7-9pm, for example, 9 million+ viewers are sought after to be put in front of the adverts during the breaks, explaining the channel's reliance on sure-fire winners like The X Factor or Britain's Got Talent. This need has only grown with the advent of cable and satellite TV and more channels to lose viewers to. Equally, ITV cannot allow a political flavour to colour their programming that might be at odds with the political or business interests of those funding them, lest that support be withdrawn.
Channel 4, unsurprisingly, finds itself somewhere in the middle. Like ITV, it is privately funded by advertising, but like the BBC it has no shareholders or bankrollers, being publicly owned. Once ITV has met all of its costs, what happens to the profits is then down, ultimately, to the executives and shareholders. The money might be reinvested, but, equally, a shareholder may cash out and take some of the profit with them now that their original investment is worth more. At Channel 4 Corporation, meanwhile, once all the bills and staff have been paid, all the profit is reinvested back into the channel and its content.
And quite the portfolio it is too. Channel 4 is now much wider than the single channel of its humble 1982 origins, now encompassing E4, More4, 4Music and 4seven to name just a few of its core services, not to mention timeshifted ('+1') versions of these channels, its Film4 arm and, of course, its online portal, All4 (formerly 4OD). There's one other key difference to note between the channels before we delve into C4's relationship with our two sitcoms: Channel 4 has no in-house production capacity. That means a budding comedy writer can approach the BBC and ITV with a script for a pilot and sell it. From then on, the in-house teams at that channel will build the sets, hire the actors, film and produce the whole thing from start to finish. On the one hand, that massively reduces the workload for the creator of the sitcom. They write the funnies, the channel does the rest. On the other, it also massively reduces their control over their vision. As mentioned earlier, BBC and ITV have particular considerations to make to their audiences or funders, meaning elements of a sitcom writer's script could be altered or cut and the final product far from their vision but still with their name on it - even worse if the sitcom then flops! When a writer such as, say, Graham Linehan presents a sitcom to Channel 4, he knows that his next step after a green light and agreed budget will be to sort out the casting, filming and production before turning a finished series over to Channel 4 - but he'll be in far greater control of the project and when his name appears in the credits the final work will truly reflect his efforts. Next time, we'll have a look at why C4C ended up syndicating the two sitcoms we are studying. Having read this post, however, you should already be able to have some fair guesses as to their reasons!