BBC heavyweights say Channel 4’s £75m Baked Off coup reopens the debate about privatising it. Jay Hunt, the creative chief who snapped up the series, says: “The BBC lost Bake Off. Channel 4 didn’t take it.” Lord Sugar reckons the signing will be a “total disaster”. David Abraham, the channel’s chief executive, points out all profits are ploughed into programmes that fulfil the channel’s public service brief. So Come Dine With Me (and Bake Off pending) help pay for Channel 4 News and Paralympics coverage.
This show will run and run, with three key points. If Jay Hunt is right and made her offer only after negotiations between Bake Off’s creator and owner, Love Films, and the corporation had broken down, there are no sharp elbows in sight. The BBC, rightly or wrongly, declined to stump up. End of story (though not of confected anger).
If Sugar is right, he hasn’t understood the loyalty-free format he is famous for, devised by the LA-based Brit who also concocted The Voice and sold both packages right round the world. Who was Mark Burnett’s first Apprentice seeker? Donald Trump. Maybe not a Mary Berry lookalike, but still a pre-baked personality slotted into place.
And if the BBC really wants to see Bake Off audiences on 4 falter and fade, surely its best plan would be to shut up about the whole thing – because every fresh turn of the controversy screw guarantees more millions switching on to see what all the fuss has been about.
