When Ofcom nominated Charles Gurassa as chairman of Channel 4 last year, he appeared just another HMG-compliant appointee. Long City experience, great and good works on the side (English Heritage, the National Trust), clear expertise in selling companies off. But media experience: nil.
Yet it may soon be time to cancel that first, sceptical assessment as Theresa May’s lack of a majority cuts both ways. The Tories wanted to shunt C4’s HQ out of London to somewhere more regionally emollient. The C4 board didn’t like that one bit and seem inclined to make a fight of it in what Gurassa calls a “new environment”.
He’s right to push the issue. C4 is not the BBC. It’s a small commissioning hub less than a 20th of the corporation’s size. It will push out even more work to independents in the regions. Well over 50% of contracts already go that way. But there are real snags about moving the whole infrastructure.
One is national advertising. C4, with nearly £1bn in revenue last year, needs presence and easy access to an ad industry that hangs tight to its metropolitan base. Another is the extra slog of having to get independents from Exeter or Southampton to travel to Birmingham, Leeds or wherever the government decides to send it. You don’t boost the regions by picking one hub. You waste time, energy and money on a move that sounds great but offers few practical benefits. Ah! Where have I heard that sad song before? Time for another referendum perhaps?
When is a journalist not a journalist?
It’s the thinnest of career red lines. You’re either a journalist or a politician/activist. Take a few current examples. Paul Mason used to be a journalist on Newsnight: is he more activist now? George Osborne used to be a politician: is he a journalist now? And what of the Telegraph’s appointing Dia Chakravarty to “shape” its Brexit coverage, “providing a clear narrative cutting through the noise”? Chakravarty isn’t a journalist at all. She’s a tax consultant turned political director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. And what is that clear, shaped narrative you hear, transcending mere events on the road to Brexit? Answers on a second-class stamp to Telegraph Towers. First prize, a Boris tin whistle.
