Steve Cook wrote: > Channel4 recieve some funds from the licence fee. Hmm, that's not strictly true.
When Channel 4 moved from regional advertising (originally managed by the ITV regions) to national advertising (managed in-house), it did have an insurance scheme set up by the government (under the Broadcasting Act 1990) to provide a minimum income in case its advertising revenue didn't meet expectations. These insurance premiums were partially funded by the licence fee. The fear was that as the ITV-backed advertising was withdrawn, advertisers might stay away from Channel 4 due to its less populist programmes. The government tendering process for the fourth channel was for a high degree of minority and public service programming. Channel 4, as the winning tender, was bound by these restrictions. As things turned out, advertising revenue always stayed above this minimum, and thus: * The insurance never paid out. * Ergo Channel 4 never received any money. The insurance scheme was phased out in 1998. If you really want to stretch the definition, you could claim that all terrestrial broadcasters receive money from the licence fee due to the way that the BBC helps pay for the terrestrial transmitter network (it's not hard to argue that ITV, Ch4 & Five get cheap access to terrestrial TV transmitters, both analogue and especially digital), but that argument isn't specific to Channel 4. Analogue terrestrial broadcasters also receive government/taxpayers' money for party political broadcasts and public information films (eg. try not to kill cyclists; don't dangle the kettle lead in front of your two-year-old; don't set your duvet on fire; if you're not going to get your boiler serviced then at least get a CO sensor before you poison yourself to death; put the fscking battery back in your smoke alarm you dimwit; remember to breathe; etc.); again this isn't specific to Channel 4. (Spot the broadcasting geek. I have a lovely selection of Test Cards for my X-Screensaver, and am working on broadening my selection of widescreen test cards for my new widescreen laptop. Test Card W is, of course, my favourite, and I plan to personalise it by mocking-up my daughter and her teddybear in front of her easel. Don't yawn - at least I managed to get this thread back on-topic!) -- Andrew Oakley -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.org/UKTeam/
