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CHANNEL 4

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Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded entirely by its commercial activities, including advertising. It began its transmission in 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service in the United Kingdom. At the time, the only other channels were the licence-funded BBC1 and BBC2, and a single commercial broadcasting network, ITV.

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 Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. Until 2010, Channel 4 did not broadcast in Wales, but many of its programmes were re-broadcast there by the Welsh fourth channel S4C. In 2010, Channel 4 extended service into Wales and became a nationwide television channel. The network's headquarters are in London and Leeds, with creative hubs in Manchester, Glasgow and Bristol.

Channel 4 is a "publisher-broadcaster", meaning that it commissions or "buys" all of its programming from companies independent of itself. It was the first UK broadcaster to do so on a significant scale; such commissioning is a stipulation which is included in its licence to broadcast. In consequence, numerous independent production companies emerged, though external commissioning on the BBC and in ITV (where a quota of 25% minimum of total output has been imposed since the Broadcasting Act 1990 came into force) has become regular practice, as well as on the numerous stations that launched later. 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.

For a period in the mid-1980s, some sexually explicit arthouse films would be screened with a red triangle graphic in the upper right of the screen.

In recent years concerns have arisen regarding a number of programmes made for Channel 4, that are believed missing from all known archives.

Factual and current affairs

Channel 4 has a strong reputation for history programmes and documentaries. Its news service Channel 4 News is supplied by ITN, whilst its long-standing investigative documentary series, Dispatches, gains attention from other media outlets. Its live broadcast of the first public autopsy in the UK for 170 years, carried out by Gunther von Hagens in 2002 and the 2003 one-off stunt Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live proved controversial.

A season of television programmes about masturbation, called Wank Week, was to be broadcast in the United Kingdom by Channel 4 in March 2007. The series came under public attack from senior television figures, and was pulled amid claims of declining editorial standards and concern for the channel's public service broadcasting credentials.

FourDocs

FourDocs was an online documentary site provided by Channel 4. It allowed viewers to upload their own documentaries to the site for others to view. It focused on documentaries of between 3 and 5 minutes. The website also included an archive of classic documentaries, interviews with documentary filmmakers and short educational guides to documentary-making. It won a Peabody Award in 2006. The site also included a strand for documentaries of under 59 seconds, called "Microdocs".

FILM

Numerous genres of film-making – such as comedy, drama, documentary, adventure/action, romance and horror/thriller – are represented in the channel's schedule. From the launch of Channel 4 until 1998, film presentations on C4 would often be broadcast under the "Film on Four" banner.

In March 2005, Channel 4 screened the uncut Lars von Trier film The Idiots, which includes unsimulated sexual intercourse, making it the first UK terrestrial channel to do so. The channel had previously screened other films with similar material but censored and with warnings.

Since 1 November 1998, Channel 4 has had a digital subsidiary channel dedicated to the screening of films. This channel launched as a paid subscription channel under the name "FilmFour", and was relaunched in July 2006 as a free-to-air channel under the current name of "Film4". The Film4 channel carries a wide range of film productions, including acquired and Film4-produced projects. Channel 4's general entertainment channels E4 and More4 also screen feature films at certain points in the schedule as part of their content mix.

Global warming

On 8 March 2007, Channel 4 screened a documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle stating that global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times". The programme's accuracy was disputed on multiple points and commentators criticised it for being one-sided, observing that the mainstream position on global warming is supported by the scientific academies of the major industrialised nations. There were 246 complaints to Ofcom as of 25 April 2007, including allegations that the programme falsified data. The programme was criticised by scientists and scientific organisations, and various scientists who participated in the documentary claimed their views had been distorted.

Against Nature: An earlier controversial Channel 4 programme made by Martin Durkin which was also critical of the environmental movement and was charged by the UK's Independent Television Commission for misrepresenting and distorting the views of interviewees by selective editing.

The Greenhouse Conspiracy: An earlier Channel 4 documentary broadcast on 12 August 1990, as part of the Equinox series, in which similar claims were made. Three of the people interviewed (Lindzen, Michaels and Spencer) were also interviewed in The Great Global Warming Swindle.

MR BATES Vs THE POST OFFICE

Mr Bates vs The Post Office is a four-part British television drama series for ITV, written by Gwyneth Hughes, directed by James Strong and starring an ensemble cast led by Toby Jones. The series is a dramatisation of the British Post Office scandal, a miscarriage of justice in which hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted (privately and publicly) for theft, false accounting or fraud due to a faulty computer system called Horizon. It was broadcast on four consecutive days from 1 January 2024.

The series won a Peabody Award at the 85th ceremony. It won the 2025 BAFTA award for Limited Drama

Synopsis

A faulty IT system called Horizon, developed by Fujitsu, creates apparent cash shortfalls that cause Post Office Limited to pursue prosecutions for fraud, theft and false accounting against a number of subpostmasters across the UK. In 2009, a group of these, led by Alan Bates, forms the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance. The prosecutions and convictions are later ruled a miscarriage of justice at the conclusion of the Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd judicial case in 2019.

Production

Written by Gwyneth Hughes and directed by James Strong, the series was produced by Chris Clough for Little Gem and ITV Studios. Filming began in May 2023 and took place in Llandudno, Conwy, and Tatsfield, Surrey. Former member of the Business Select Committee Nadhim Zahawi had a small role, playing himself.

Journalist Nick Wallis, who has written extensively about the scandal, was a consultant on the series.

Broadcast

The series was shown on ITV1 from 1 to 4 January 2024, and was released in full on ITVX on the same date. In the United States, the series premiered on PBS's drama anthology Masterpiece in April 2024. In Australia, the series premiered in February 2024 on Channel Seven. In Germany and France the series was shown on Arte in March 2025 and was available on the Arte Mediathek until 24 June 2025.

Immediately after the final episode, ITV broadcast a documentary Mr Bates vs the Post Office: The Real Story.

Reception

The series was well received by critics and awarded four out of five by reviewers in The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian. Martin Robinson, writing in the Evening Standard, said: "The Kafka-esque situation is thoroughly humanised by the performances". On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 16 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "Dramatizing a grave injustice with terrific acting and plain-spoken righteousness, Mr Bates vs the Post Office shines much-needed light on a national scandal." On Metacritic, the series holds a weighted average score of 80 out of 100 based on seven critics.

Accolades

The series won the Jury Prize at the 2024 Broadcasting Press Guild Awards. The series won the Judges' Prize at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards in March 2024. At the National Television Awards in September 2024, Toby Jones won the Drama Performance, and the series won the Impact Award and New Drama. That month, the series won the Sky Arts Award for Television. At the 2024 Venice TV Awards, it received the award for Best TV Series.

It was nominated for Best Limited Series at the 30th Critics' Choice Awards in February 2025. The series was awarded a special recognition award at the 2025 Broadcast Awards and "Jo watches as the numbers on her screen increase as she is on the phone to Horizon IT support" won TV Moment of the Year. The series was also nominated for Best Drama Series or Serial. That scene was also nominated for Most Memorable moment at the 2025 British Academy Television Awards. It was nominated for Best Single Drama or Limited Series, and Monica Dolan was nominated for Leading Actress at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards in March 2025. That month, it was nominated at the 2025 British Academy Television Awards for Best Limited Drama, with Toby Jones and Monica Dolan nominated in the Leading Actor and Actress categories.[32] At the ceremony, ITV will be awarded the BAFTA television special award for commissioning the series. BAFTA television committee chair Hilary Rosen said: “This is public service television at its best”.

Impact

The series was credited for igniting public interest in the scandal and led to demands for the former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells to have her CBE withdrawn; a petition that accrued more than 1.2 million signatures.

Vennells issued a statement on 9 January 2024 that she would "return [her] CBE with immediate effect". However, this had no formal and immediate effect, as only the monarch can revoke or annul honours. Vennells’s appointment as CBE was formally revoked by King Charles III on 23 February for "bringing the honours system into disrepute".

Such was the impact of the drama that the scandal became a major news story, and on the following day Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced new legislation to exonerate wrongly convicted subpostmasters and said there would be a "new upfront payment of £75,000 for some of those affected".

Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake said £1bn had been budgeted for compensation payments. Lead actor Toby Jones spoke of being "very proud" of the impact the drama had, telling BBC Radio Stoke that "there have been many dramas in the past that have had a political influence, but not quite as urgently and directly as this" and that the drama was "brilliantly dramatised by the writer and the fact that it was being spoken about in Parliament within three weeks is absolutely extraordinary."

Consequential legislation

The Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Act 2024 received royal assent on 25 January, authorising compensation payments.

Another Act, the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024, was passed on 24 May, the Friday a week before Parliament was dissolved for the general election, and came into force the same day. On 13 June a similar Act of the Scottish Parliament received royal assent to deal with offences that came within its legislative competence, coming into force the next day.

These Acts quashed all convictions where–

- it was made before the Act came into force;

- it was prosecuted in England and Wales by the Post Office or Crown Prosecution Service, or in Northern Ireland by the police, the Director of Public Prosecutions or the Public Prosecution Service, or in Scotland;

- it was alleged to have been committed between 23 September 1996 and 31 December 2018;

- it was for false accounting, fraud, handling stolen goods, money laundering, or theft, or in Scotland embezzlement, fraud, theft, or uttering, or for attempting, conspiring, encouraging, inciting, aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring any of those offences;

- the defendant was operating a post office business or working in a post office, and the offence was alleged to have been carried out in connection with that work; and

- the post office in question was using Horizon at the time.

The non-Scottish Act made an exception for offences which had been considered by the relevant Court of Appeal. The two Acts also ordered records of cautions and other alternatives to conviction relating to relevant offences to be expunged.

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