Ofcom is coming under pressure to prove it has considered a diverse range of candidates for the chair of Channel 4, the publicly owned commercially funded broadcaster.
The media regulator could announce its choice to replace Terry Burns at the head of the Channel 4 as early as this week, although the crossbench peer is not due to stand down until the end of the month.
Three white men have emerged as leading contenders to replace Lord Burns: Mark Price, the departing managing director of Waitrose and current deputy chairman of Channel 4; Simon Bax, the former Chiat/Day chief financial officer; and Stephen Hill, a former Betfair chief executive and Ofcom non-executive director.
At an event to update its year-old 360°Diversity Charter, C4 chief executive David Abraham said the channel’s commitment to diversity was a fundamental part of its value to British society as a whole.
An MP in the House of Commons event, which also heard from actor Idris Elba, said privately that he hoped another white man would not be picked by Ofcom to replace Burns. “The government wanted something different when they failed to extend his [Burns’s] contract. And yet we seem about to get another older white man.”
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has a veto over the role if it refuses to accept Ofcom’s choice.
A spokesman for Ofcom said that the selection panel led by its chair Patricia Hodgson was itself diverse and added that there were more than three candidates being considered.
Price became the leading contender for the job when he announced he was standing down as managing director of Waitrose after 33 years at the food group. Yet, as deputy chairman, he is also understood to have agreed to act as interim chair.
Ofcom is led by Sharon White, the first black woman to head a media regulator, but she has no role in the selection of the Channel 4 chair.
Hodgson, who was appointed to the media regulator in 2014, was a former producer and journalist and director of policy and planning at the BBC.
