Sony Pictures Television‘s president has made an impassioned plea to the new leaders of the BBC and Channel 4 to form an alliance that would reshape the UK’s television industry.
Wayne Garvie, the outspoken British executive who oversees a content empire that includes The Crown and Industry, argued that Channel 4 should become the “de facto commercial arm” of the BBC to help the two organizations compete with the likes of YouTube and TikTok.
He appealed to Matt Brittin, the incoming director general of the BBC, and new Channel 4 CEO Priya Dogra to seize the moment of fresh leadership and confront the “crisis” of fragmented viewing and cratering ad sales that could make British broadcasters a “weak field of has-beens.”
“They come with none of the public service baggage that’s held other people back. They need to come together and work out a shared solution to the problems,” Garvie told the Creative Cities Convention in Liverpool. “There is a world in which they can come together and retain a different, independent Channel 4, with Channel 4, the de facto commercial arm of the BBC, running the [commercial] channels and BBC Studios. That way we can realign our public service broadcasting and protect it for the future.”
He continued: “I genuinely think that there is a crisis here, and we can spend a lot of time thinking about it, but you need to get on and do it, because the world is changing so quickly, and the normal speed of change within British broadcasting is so slow that the game could be over.”
Garvie stressed that it would be important to keep a “separate identity” for Channel 4, but said change was unavoidable. “You’ve got two leaders who have got to think differently, and they’ve got to act quickly,” the Sony chief added.
Garvie’s vision could be dead on arrival, however. Speaking from the same Creative Cities stage on Wednesday, Channel 4 boss Dogra poured cold water on the idea of a merger with the BBC. She said it would result in Channel 4 being absorbed by the BBC, leading to the loss of its editorial voice. “That would be a loss to society, [and] a real loss for the creative economy,” she said. Dogra did say she was open to collaboration, though she was not clear on what this would entail.
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.
During his “wake-up” address at Creative Cities, Garvie also reflected on the growing creator economy and its impact on traditional television. “The cottage industry that is digital content creation is transforming the industrial process of television, and if you do not understand that and try to adapt to it and interact with it, you are … living with delusion,” he said.
He referenced Sony’s partnership with TommyInnit on digital series 100 Questions with Tom Simons. A Minecraft enthusiast, Simons has 50M followers and 3 billion views, with Garvie noting that 100 Questions has generated 33M views in less than a month.
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