Priya Dogra has used her first public address as Channel 4‘s new CEO to pour cold water on the idea that the UK network should merge with the BBC to compete with YouTube and Netflix.
In a fireside chat at the Creative Cities Convention in Liverpool, the former Warner Bros. Discovery and Sky executive said combining the BBC and Channel 4 would leave the UK’s creative community and audience short-changed.
The mooted merger has been a source of industry speculation for years. The British government has fanned the flames of this conversation, tasking the UK’s Competition & Markets Authority and regulator Ofcom to review how consolidation could change the industry.
Dogra’s position was clear. “I was in mergers and acquisitions for a long time. And the thing you learn is that there are no mergers. There are only acquisitions. Someone is always buying someone else and from my seat, that’s the wrong answer for Channel 4, because it would just mean the Channel 4 gets subsumed into another organization,” she said.
“I think the loss of Channel 4’s editorial voice, the impact that we have on content [and] on indies, that would be a loss to society, [and] a real loss for the creative economy.” Dogra added that she was “very open” to exploring partnerships and collaborations, though she was not specific about what this might entail.
In further comments relating to the BBC, she called on the government to ditch proposals that would allow the corporation to supplement its licence fee income with advertising.
Dogra said the impact of such a move on ad-funded networks would be “seismic” and “risks undermining the BBC’s commitment to universality.” She continued: “It would be useful if the government takes that off the table and gives the industry some amount of certainty.”
After the BBC announced 2,000 job cuts last month, Deadline asked Dogra if Channel 4 could avoid having to make similar redundancies. She declined to rule out layoffs. “I am doing a review of the strategy, the structure, the shape and size of the organization,” she said. “It’s too early to judge where that review will go.”
Interviewed by Hollyoaks executive producer Hannah Cheers, Dogra confirmed her commitment to building Channel 4’s production capabilities. The CEO said the strategy was important to Channel 4’s financial sustainability, but acknowledged that it had been a bone of contention for producers.
“Some of the discussions in the last years have made some of those relationships tense, and perhaps the conversations aren’t happening in as constructive or transparent a level as we can possibly be having. So I would like that to change to some extent,” Dogra said.