About the Author: Justin Smith is principal lecturer and subject leader for Film Studies, University of Portsmouth. His publications include monograph, Withnail and Us: Cult Films and Film Cults in British Cinema, 1968-86 (I. B. Tauris, 2010) and (with Sue Harper) British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (Edinburgh University Press, 2011). He is the Principal Investigator on the Channel 4 and British Film Culture project.
Channel 4 began broadcasting on 2nd November 1982, the same date on which BBC2 had begun transmission in 1968 (a date which was itself commemorative of the first day of BBC television broadcasting in 1936). That quotation was reinforced by the use of a 4 birthday candle at the close of broadcasting on the first day of Channel 4 – exactly the same celebration image used by BBC 2. For all the controversy surrounding its remit to be ‘different’, there was a nascent charm in that desire to belong.
In honour of its 25th birthday, the British Film Institute hosted a weekend conference which brought together media academics and television professionals at the BFI South Bank 17-18 November 2007. If there had been a better party going on at 124 Horseferry Road, no-one present seemed to mind.
Appropriately enough, the opening keynote address was given by Professor John Ellis – an erstwhile programme-maker for Channel 4 who has since returned to his academic roots, lately becoming Chairman of the BUFVC. Channel 4’s remit – he reminded those in the audience who may not have been old enough to remember - was to challenge, to shock, to be opinionated, to give voice to minorities, but also to reach out and be inclusive. Its independent production conditions spawned a new relationship with the viewer. But in the early days the Channel struggled to find its voice. While lifestyle programming was probably, in retrospect, its most influential innovation, this was a channel hurried to the air. Channel 4’s enduring legacy, Ellis argued, was to have created the preconditions for broadcasting arrangements today; but paradoxically, in so doing, it destroyed the justification for its own existence.
This theme was one reprised throughout the weekend. Delegates offered differing perspectives on familiar aspects of the Channel’s identity: brand aesthetics, ethnic minority programming, the roles of women, innovations in popular drama, the youth market, participatory programming, reality TV, philosophy, Film Four and American imports. Yet there remained a shared and pervasive gloom about how Channel 4 has sold its birthright in the years since deregulation.
Certainly this gathering seemed determined to cherish the romantic memory of radical television which brought remarkable programming to new audiences, recalling a brief moment in the history of public service broadcasting when the old Reithian vows had been renewed, before everything returned once more, with inevitability, to the values of the market. However attractive such a view might be, from left-field, it is not the whole story. The cultural historian must endeavour, unsentimentally, to understand the forces which shape innovation and to trace their influence. The timely publication of two accomplished books on the subject seeks, in different ways, to do just that.
Justin Smith