Channel 4

*This article is about the British television station. For the parent company, see Channel Four Television Corporation. For other uses, see Channel 4 (disambiguation).*

## Channel 4

### Picture format

576i (SDTV) 16:9
1080i (HDTV) 16:9

### Audience share

4.96%
0.77% (+1)

### Broadcast Area

United Kingdom
Ireland

### Sister channel(s)

4seven
Film4
E4
More4
4Music
Box Upfront
The Box
Box Hits
Kerrang!
Kiss
Magic

### Timeshift Service

Channel 4 +1
Channel 4 +1 HD

## Terrestrial

### Freeview

Channel 4
Channel 7 (Wales)
Channel 13 (+1)
Channel 104 (HD)
 Channel 109 (+1 HD)

## Satellite

### Freesat

Channel 104 (SD)
Channel 120 (Wales)
Channel 121 (+1)

### Sky (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland)

Channel 104 (SD/HD)
Channel 138 (HD) (except London)
Channel 204 (+1)
Channel 804 (SD) (London)

### Sky (Wales)

Channel 117
Channel 138 (HD)
Channel 217 (+1)

## Cable

### Virgin Media (UK)

Channel 104
Channel 141 (HD)
Channel 142 (+1)

**Channel 4** is a British public-service television broadcaster that began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. With the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital on 31 March 2010, Channel 4 became a UK-wide TV channel for the first time.

The channel was established to provide a fourth television service to the United Kingdom in addition to the licence-funded BBC One and BBC Two, and the single commercial broadcasting network ITV.

## History

### Conception

*Main article: Fourth UK television service*
Before Channel 4 and S4C, Britain had three terrestrial television services: BBC1, BBC2, and ITV. The Broadcasting Act 1980 began the process of adding a fourth, and Channel 4, along with its Welsh counterpart, was formally created by an Act of Parliament in 1982. After some months of test broadcasts, it began scheduled transmissions on 2 November 1982.

The notion of a second commercial broadcaster in the United Kingdom had been around since the inception of ITV in 1954 and its subsequent launch in 1955; the idea of an "ITV2" (which came in 1998) was long expected and pushed for. Indeed, television sets sold throughout the 1970s and early 1980s had a spare tuning button labelled "ITV/IBA 2". Throughout ITV's history and until Channel 4 finally became a reality, a perennial dialogue existed between the GPO, the government, the ITV companies and other interested parties, concerning the form such an expansion of commercial broadcasting would take. It was most likely politics which had the biggest impact in leading to a delay of almost three decades before the second commercial channel became a reality.

One clear benefit of the "late arrival" of the channel was that its frequency allocations at each transmitter had already been arranged in the early 1960s, when the launch of an ITV2 was highly anticipated. This led to very good coverage across most of the country and few problems of interference with other UK-based transmissions; a stark contrast to the problems associated with Channel 5's launch almost 15 years later.

### Wales

*Main article: S4C*
At the time the fourth service was being considered, a movement in Wales lobbied for the creation of dedicated service that would air Welsh-language programmes, then only catered for at "off peak" times on BBC Wales and HTV. The campaign was taken so seriously by Gwynfor Evans, former president of Plaid Cymru, that he threatened the government with a hunger strike were it not to honour the plans.

The result was that Channel 4 as seen by the rest of the United Kingdom would be replaced in Wales by *Sianel Pedwar Cymru (S4C)* (*Channel Four Wales*). Operated by a specially created authority, S4C would air programmes in Welsh made by HTV, the BBC and independent companies. Initially limited frequency space meant that Channel 4 could not be broadcast alongside S4C, though some Channel 4 programmes would be aired at less popular times on the Welsh variant, a practice that carried on up until the closure of S4C's analogue transmissions in 2010 when S4C became a fully Welsh channel.

Since then, carriage on digital cable, satellite and digital terrestrial has introduced Channel 4 to Welsh homes where it is now universally available.

### Recent history

Channel 4 has raised concerns over how it might finance its public service obligations after digital switch-over. However, some certainty came with the announcement in April 2006 that Channel 4's digital switch-over costs would be paid for by licence fee revenues.

On 28 March 2007, Channel 4 announced plans to launch a music channel "4Music" as a joint venture with British media company EMAP which would include carriage on the Freeview platform. On 15 August 2008, 4Music was launched across the UK. Channel 4 announced interest in launching a high-definition version of Film4 on Freeview, to coincide with the launch of Channel 4 HD, however the fourth HD slot was given to Channel 5 instead. Channel 4 has since acquired a 50% stake in EMAP's TV business for a reported £28 million.

Channel 4 was considered for privatisation by the governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. As of 2016 the future of the channel was again being looked into by the government, with analysts suggesting several options for the channel's future.

In June 2017, it was announced that Alex Mahon would be the next chief executive, and would take over from David Abraham, who left in November 2017.

## Public service remit

Channel 4 was established with, and continues to hold, a remit of public service obligations which it must fulfil. The remit changes periodically, as dictated by various broadcasting and communications acts, and is regulated by the various authorities Channel 4 has been answerable to; originally the IBA, then the ITC and now Ofcom.

The preamble of the remit as per the Communications Act 2003 states that:

>
> "The public service remit for Channel 4 is the provision of a broad range of high quality and diverse programming which, in particular:
>
>
>
> * demonstrates innovation, experiment and creativity in the form and content of programmes;
> * appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society;
> * makes a significant contribution to meeting the need for the licensed public service channels to include programmes of an educational nature and other programmes of educative value; and
> * exhibits a distinctive character."
>
>
>

The remit also involves an obligation to provide programming for schools, and a substantial amount of programming produced outside of Greater London.

## Programming

Channel 4 is a "publisher-broadcaster", meaning that it commissions or "buys" all of its programming from companies independent of itself, and was the first broadcaster in the United Kingdom to do so on any significant scale; such commissioning is a stipulation which is included in its licence to broadcast. This had the consequence of starting an industry of production companies that did not have to rely on owning an ITV licence to see their programmes air, though since Channel 4, external commissioning has become regular practice on the numerous stations that have launched since, as well as on the BBC and in ITV (where a quota of 25% minimum of total output has been imposed since the 1990 Broadcasting Act came into force). Although it was the first British broadcaster to commission all of its programmes from third parties, Channel 4 was the last terrestrial broadcaster to outsource its transmission and playout operations (to Red Bee Media), after 25 years in-house.

The requirement to obtain all content externally is stipulated in its licence. Additionally, Channel 4 also began a trend of owning the copyright and distribution rights of the programmes it aired, in a manner that is similar to the major Hollywood studios' ownership of television programmes that they did not directly produce. Thus, although Channel 4 does not produce programmes, many are seen as belonging to it.

It was established with a specific intention of providing programming to groups of minority interests, not catered for by its competitors, which at the time were only the BBC and ITV.

Channel 4 also pioneered the concept of *stranded programming*, where seasons of programmes following a common theme would be aired and promoted together. Some would be very specific, and run for a fixed period of time; the *4 Mation* season, for example, showed innovative animation. Other, less specific strands, were (and still are) run regularly, such as *T4*, a strand of programming aimed at teenagers, on weekend mornings (and weekdays during school/college holidays); *Friday Night Comedy*, a slot where the channel would pioneer its style of comedy commissions, *4Music* (now a separate channel) and *4Later*, an eclectic collection of offbeat programmes transmitted in the early hours of the morning.

In its earlier years, *Red Triangle* was the name given to the airing of certain risqué art-house films due to the use of a red triangle DOG in the upper right of the screen, dubbed as being pornographic by many of Channel 4's critics, while general broadcasting of films on the station for many years came under the banner of *Film on Four* prior to the launch of the *FilmFour* brand and station in the late 1990s.

#### Most watched programmes

The following is a list of the 10 most watched shows on Channel 4 since launch, based on Live +7 data supplied by BARB, and archival data published by Channel 4.

## Presentation

Since its launch in 1982, Channel 4 has used the same logo which consists of a stylised numeral "4" made up of nine differently-shaped blocks. The logo was designed by Martin Lambie-Nairn and his brother Robinson and was the first channel in the UK to depict an ident made using advanced computer generation (the first electronically-generated ident was on BBC Two in 1979, but this was two-dimensional). It was designed in conjunction with Bo Gehring Aviation of Los Angeles and originally depicted the "4" in red, yellow, green, blue and purple. The music accompanying the ident was called "Fourscore" and was composed by Lord David Dundas, later released as a single alongside with a B-side, "Fourscore Two", although neither appeared in the UK charts. In November 1992, "Fourscore" was replaced by new music.

In 1996, Channel 4 commissioned Tomato Films to revamp the "4", which resulted in the "Circles" idents showing four white circles forming up transparently over various scenes, with the "4" logo depicted in white in one of the circles.

In 1999, Spin redesigned the logo to feature in a single square which sat on the right-hand side of the screen, whilst various stripes would move along from left to right, often lighting the squared "4" up. Like the "Circles" idents, the stripes would be interspersed with various scenes potentially related to the upcoming programme.

The logo was made three-dimensional again in 2004 when it was depicted in filmed scenes that show the blocks forming the "4" logo for less than a second before the action moves away again.

In 2015, the logo was disassembled completely to allow the blocks to appear as parts of a nature scene, sometimes featuring a strange dancing creature and sometimes being excavated for scientific study, one being studied under a microscope and showing a tardigrade. The second wave of these idents, launched in 2017, depict a giant creature made of the "4" blocks (made to look almost like a person) interacting with everyday life, sometimes shouting the "Fourscore" theme as a foghorn.

## All 4

*Main article: All 4*
All 4 is a video on demand service from Channel 4, launched in November 2006 as 4oD. The service offers a variety of programmes recently shown on Channel 4, E4, More4 or from their archives, though some programmes and movies are not available due to rights issues.

## External links

Template:Media in the United Kingdom
Template:Freeview