After months of criticism and taking the flack for ITV’s woes, outgoing chief executive Charles Allen, giving this year’s MacTaggart keynote speech has attacked Channel 4 for getting a free ride and failing to live up to its public service remits.
Allen recently announced his resignation from the post but will not step down until January. Giving the annual lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival today he said:
It gets a free ride in terms of its spectrum and makes absolutely no return to either the Treasury or to shareholders. In exchange for these privleges you would expect Channel 4 to be held to a far tougher set of principles than its commercial competitiors. Wrong. Channel 4 has a PSB remit high on warm words, low on specifics. Effectively it makes it up as it goes along. In key areas, Channel 4 is delivering less than its commercial competitors. Less original production. Less production outside London. Less news in and around peak.
He also went on to criticse the number of repeats, acquired programmes and US imports on the pubcaster. He added
And let’s not forget Channel 4 does spend £90 million on education. Mind you that includes such instructive fair as Scrapheap Challenge and Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice.
Channel 4 have hit back however saying that ITV simply want to restrict its ability to compete for advertising revenue.
A spokesman said
ITV is angling to lose all its public service programming, including children’s programmes and regional news. A glance at Channel 4’s schedule any week of the year shows a far broader and more challenging mix of programmes than on ITV… In the week when one of ITV’s own senior executives called its flagship channel unwatchable it would have been better for Charles to use his last major industry platform to set out a vision for ITV’s own commercial and creative reinvention.
