U.K. minister mulls Channel 4's fate

Burnham favors tie-up with BBC Worldwide

By STEVE CLARKE

OXFORD -- A British government minister has poured cold water on the idea of merging state-owned pubcaster Channel 4 with rival commercial terrestrial web Five, and indicated that his preferred solution to the web's funding crisis is a tie-up with BBC Worldwide that would enable both to exploit world markets.

Delivering the keynote speech at the Oxford Media Convention, the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, Andy Burnham, avoided any mention of a merger with Five, owned by the pan-European power house RTL.

Later, in a question and answer session, he made it clear that some form of partnership involving Channel 4 and the BBC’s commercial arm, BBC Worldwide, was his favored way forward.

He said: “It is natural to look at BBC Worldwide first. There are obvious synergies (between Channel 4 and Worldwide) such as exploiting their creative strength overseas.”

Burnham’s remarks will be welcomed by Channel 4, whose CEO Andy Duncan recently dismissed the idea of a merger with Five as “a mess.”

But any attempts to hand over parts of the ambitious Worldwide to Channel 4, which claims it faces a £150 million ($207 million) funding gap by 2012, are being fought by the BBC, whose director-general Mark Thompson supports a merger between Channel 4 and Five.

Speaking at the same Oxford confab, the pubcaster’s chairman Michael Lyons said that Worldwide is “integrally part of the BBC” and that an “umbilical cord” exists between Worldwide and BBC program makers.

“It cannot be right for BBC Worldwide to play the role of Lloyds Bank,” warned the BBC chairman.

But Burnham said that while preserving the strength of the BBC was “not negotiable," the government had still not ruled out redistributing the pubcaster’s coin to help maintain public service plurality in the U.K.

Insisting that the “Channel 4 brand is here to stay,” the pol said that as well as the BBC’s historic mission to inform, educate and entertain, it should also become an enabler and form partnerships with other media outfits.

Burnham added that it was too soon to "start reading the obituaries" on the role to be played by Channel 4, Five and ITV, Blighty’s biggest private terrestrial web, in the delivery of public service content.