Article:
‘More Than a Television Channel’: Channel 4, FilmFour and a Failed Convergence Strategy

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dc.creatorAndrews, Hannah
dc.date.accessioned2020-08-13T11:45:16Z
dc.date.available2020-08-13T11:45:16Z
dc.date.issued2014-12-24
dc.description.abstractObliged by act of Parliament to “innovate and experiment,” Channel 4 has, since its birth in 1982, been the UK’s most pioneering commercial television broadcaster. Its arrival broadened the meaning, function and operations of public service broadcasting in the UK, with a particular focus on minorities and pushing boundaries, political and creative. In the late 1990s, though, it was under increasing threat from specialist pay-TV services that could more accurately target its audiences. As a commercially funded channel with public service responsibilities, Channel 4 was under increasing pressure to be financially independent and fulfil a challenging remit. Its response to a threatened income and increasing competition was to diversify its portfolio into various media related businesses, particularly taking advantage of the arrival of digital television to expand its offer. The subtitle of the Corporation’s 2000 Annual report, ‘More than a Television Channel’ indicates the confidence, optimism and boldness with which this expansion was approached.The rapid expansion of the channel’s portfolio in a time of relative confidence in the commercial viability of the television industry was to be reversed only a few years later, when, after it failed to produce the returns it was designed for, 4Ventures was drastically scaled back, and Channel 4 refocused its efforts on the core broadcast channel.Channel 4 therefore offers a test case in the limits of convergence as a strategy for survival for British broadcasters at the arrival of digital television. This paper focuses specifically on the areas of Channel 4’s strategy that pertained to one of the broadcaster’s particular strengths: film culture. It explores one of the film offshoots of 4Ventures: FilmFour Ltd, the film finance, production, sales and distribution company and how its failure to find a commercial hit mirrors the general problems for a commercial public service broadcaster in expanding to become a convergent television company.en
dc.identifier.doi10.18146/2213-0969.2014.jethc065
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/14103
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/15067
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherNetherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
dc.publisher.placeHilversum
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2213-0969
dc.relation.ispartofseriesVIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
dc.subjectFernsehende
dc.subjectdigital televisionen
dc.subjectChannel 4en
dc.subjectFilmFouren
dc.subjectConvergenceen
dc.subjectUK film industryen
dc.subjectUK television industryen
dc.subject.ddcddc:070
dc.subject.ddcddc:791
dc.title‘More Than a Television Channel’: Channel 4, FilmFour and a Failed Convergence Strategyen
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2021-05-29T06:06:35
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttps://doi.org/10.18146/2213-0969.2014.jethc065
local.source.epage13
local.source.issue6
local.source.spage5
local.source.volume3

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2014 | 6 | Convergent Television(s)