2003 Programme Review

About 4 Review of 2003 Statement of Promises In 2003, Channel 4 took the diverse experience of living in Britain now head on. Across its current affairs, drama and satirical entertainment, it mirrored the passions of a society again waking up to political choice. In the range of its contemporary documentary, Without Channel 4’s investment, it is from the enjoyable to the searing, it displayed doubtful whether there would be a significant the uninhibited openness of the personal; in its independent production sector in the UK, and it education programmes it tested the ambiguous would certainly be far less diverse. connections between our present sensibility and the past that shapes and challenges it. Competitive Performance It also placed Britain in perspective in the This has been a challenging year for Channel way it continuously explored and sought to 4 as for other terrestrial channels. Our ratings understand the rest of the world. performance has been resilient in peak time (forecast 9.4% in 2003 versus 9.7% in 2002) Too much public service television retails a but we have lost share in daytime and later soft focus, “heritage” view of Britain, protecting at night. the old and comforting from the modern and dangerous. At its best Channel 4 refused such a Landmarks of 2003 false distinction. The Deal Second Generation Where Channel 4 invented, others followed. Operatunity Programmes pioneered on Channel 4 were The Death of Klinghoffer openly copied by the BBC, ITV and Five. The Hajj – Greatest Trip on Earth Channel 4 now, as much as it ever did, does the Channel 4 News in Iraq original thinking for the rest of British television. Bremner, Bird and Fortune Georgian Underworld Channel 4 did this through investing more The Theory of Everything than ever before on screen in its highest ever The First World War spend on originated British programmes. The That’ll Teach Them 2003 programme schedule cost £448m, 5% Wife Swap higher than the £426m of 2002. 70.1% of our Born to be Different programmes were originated UK productions, The Last Peasants a total cost of £373m. This was an increase The Day I’ll Never Forget on 2002 (68%) and way above our licence Bo Selecta requirement of 60%. In peak time, 83% of our The Salon programmes were British original production, far exceeding our licence requirement of 70%. This amounted to a spend in peak time of £226m, an increase over 2002 of £15m. Channel 4 programmes broadcast in 2003 were commissioned from 402 production companies, of whom 312 were independent producers. 131 were companies from the Nations and Regions, and £110m was invested in the Nations and Regions, the highest ever sum. 56 companies had not been commissioned by Channel 4 before. About 4 _1 Review of 2003 Statement of Promises About 4 Review of 2003 Statement of Promises Drama architecture with Will Allsop’s series Super In our statement of Promises for 2003, we Cities UK leading up to The Stirling Prize. Grand stated that we intended to screen 50 episodes Designs continued as the foremost architecture of drama this year, one for every week of the series on British television. year. In the event, we screened 36 pieces of new drama, excluding Hollyoaks and Brookside. Education This was because of the postponement That’ll Teach ‘Em was the most prominent of Shameless to 2004 for scheduling and education event of the television year. It took a compliance reasons. factual entertainment format and applied it to a matter of current controversy: examination The Deal was the definitive political programme standards. of the year on any channel. Broadcast on the eve of the Labour conference, it was critically A Second Chance was a three part multicultural acclaimed and defined the politics of the Labour series giving new opportunities to children Party in power. who had failed in the conventional education systems. The story of Ryan at Downside Buried joined Teachers as a second long became a national talking point. running drama series. Teachers returned for its third, and longest, series of 13 parts, and Adult at 14 was the major educational maintained its popularity despite significant campaign of 2003. It examined the problems cast changes. Twenty things to do before you’re regarding the age of consent and the sexual thirty was a worthwhile experiment to produce responsibility of teenagers in the light of the a long running half hour comedy drama series; Government’s Sexual Offences Bill. however, it proved too insubstantial. Education: History and Science There were three further drama events. Second The biggest educational event was Time Team’s Generation, a major multicultural drama, Big Monster Dig, a live event across Britain. set in Britain and India; Forty a three hour Carefully planned with the archaeological drama event played over three nights; and institutions, 1,341 pits were dug with 10,000 Pleasureland a single drama at the heart of our participants. There were 631,000 page views Adult at 14 season. on the website and 840 subscribers to the SMS service. Arts Operatunity was the most popular and The Georgian Underworld exemplified successful Arts documentary series on Channel Channel 4’s innovative perspective on history, 4 for many years, a prominent example documenting the social history of 18th Century of innovation in peak time. The Death of Britain in a series of iconic stories. With The Klinghoffer, directed by acclaimed documentary British Empire Niall Ferguson established maker Penny Woolcock, was an example of a new authorial historical perspective and Channel 4’s cultural sponsorship of a work too prompted a debate about Imperial history and controversial to be made elsewhere. Klinghoffer reputations at the time of the Iraq crisis. The and Operatunity both won Prix Italia in 2003. First World War, at ten hours, was the biggest ever regional factual commission by Channel There were landmark Arts series with The 4. Its fresh perspective, seeing the conflict in History of the Novel and Matt’s Old Masters. global terms, brought it much critical acclaim. Trevor Nelson’s Soul Nation was the landmark The most ambitious series of the year was multicultural Arts series of the year. We also Ancient Egyptians, the recreation as drama aired a biography of Philip Larkin. The Art Show documentary, from hieroglyphic sources, of continued with a long run of programmes four key events in Ancient Egypt. Channel 4 devoted to contemporary artists. Coverage of corrected the preponderance on television of the twentieth Turner Prize was accompanied male on screen historians with Bettany Hughes’ by a documentary on the impact of the Prize Seven Ages of Britain. on British art. The Channel championed About 4 _2 Review of 2003 Statement of Promises About 4 Review of 2003 Statement of Promises Science programmes ranged from the most In the Primary area, animators continued intellectually ambitious to the quirkily popular. production of a 13 part science animation series Two landmark series, DNA and The Theory of Blue Dragon for 5 – 7 year olds. The Jacqueline Everything brought complicated ideas about Wilson feature length drama The Illustrated genetics and quantum theory to a peak time Mum, starring Michelle Collins, was broadcast in audience. Magnetic Flip explored geophysics. December. There were topical and reactive programmes on the space shuttle and human cloning. Gods Religion in the Sky was an innovative and imaginative Channel 4 produced two of the most noticeable astronomy series. Bodyshock was a new religious programmes of the year: the ambitious biology series with a range of extreme scientific coverage in real time of Hajj – Greatest Trip stories. Surviving Extremes explored physical on Earth from Mecca on the eve of The Iraq and human geography, with a revealing War, and Rowan Williams in Conversation, four multicultural perspective. programmes applying the new Archbishop’s theology to specific moral issues. Some of My Schools Programmes Best Friends was a thought provoking set of During 2003 4 Learning broadcast 737 hours of personal statements on faith in a secular society. schools programmes across the schedule. Blaming the Jews was a typically Channel 4 4 Learning has focussed on resources for the provocative commentary on the blatancy of anti- 14 – 19 age group and two thirds of the budget semitism in the Muslim world. has been spent in this area. News and Current Affairs An education based version of Big Brother In a year dominated by Iraq and the Prime was broadcast in peak time. Teen Big Brother Minister, Channel 4 has had some of the defining fused this well known programme brand with a pieces of television. Two were not formally clear set of educational goals; the educational journalism. The Deal dominated the Labour content was developed in conjunction with The Conference. Bremner, Bird and Fortune defined Learning Skills Council. Channel 4 also showed the scepticism about the War, mixing their satire 4 Learning’s contemporary version of Twelfth with striking original journalism, and the series Night, starring Parminda Nagras, in peak time. got its highest ratings for over five years. This Teen Life in the Life Stuff strand showed Channel 4 News defined the debate about the the results of 4 Learning’s survey into teen War and its aftermath. In January a Channel attitudes, lifestyles and aspirations. Linked 4 News scoop revealed the ‘dodgy dossier’ programmes included The A – Z of Drugs and which led to the controversy about evidence for Dealing with Drugs, and two drama series weapons of mass destruction. Lindsey Hilsum More Than Love and Decisions have presented won an International Emmy for her reporting complex teen dilemmas. Two series Working from Baghdad. Alistair Campbell made his Week and From the Top presented the world of celebrated on air attack on the BBC walking into work.

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