UK’s Channel 4 poised to reveal cuts of more than 200 jobs this week

Alex Mahon (Source: RTS/Richard Kendal)

Channel 4 in the UK is poised to reveal cuts of more than 200 jobs this week as it attempts to navigate its way through the country’s major advertising downturn.

The public broadcaster, which relies on advertising for all of its funding, is expected to announce that around 15% of staff – potentially up to 250 positions – will lose their jobs from its 1,300 strong workforce.

Channel 4 said it was “having to deal with an extremely uncertain economy” in response to the reports, which come three weeks since news of the cuts first emerged.

The broadcaster, led by former Shine TV boss Alex Mahon, has slashed its spending back on all fronts with only a handful of commissions being made in the past six months. Shows have also been cut, including SAS: Who Dares Wins and Steph’s Packed Lunch.

The Great British Bake-Off

The job losses at the Gogglebox broadcaster are expected to be the deepest for almost 15 years and earlier this month Mahon pointed to “all the market change and complexity that we need to adapt to” in reference to the cuts.

Background & context to Channel 4 cuts

Cuts of this size have not been since at C4 since the 2008 economic crisis and will likely affect London-based staff most because the organisation recently committed to expanding its employee numbers outside of the UK capital from 500 to 600 by next year.

Mahon, who late last year described the industry as being in “market shock territory”, told staff at the start of the year that the broadcaster was “accelerating our existing plans to weather the sharp and protracted advertising slowdown that has hit the whole industry.”

She added that the organisation has “been working carefully to minimise the impact on individuals.”

C4 is a public broadcaster but entirely funded by advertising, with a spend of just over £700m ($890m) on programming in 2022.

Its output ranges from dramas such as Somewhere Boy to The Great British Bake Off, while international acquisitions have included Fox’s single-camera comedy Animal Control, which airs on C4’s E4 network.

Somewhere Boy (Source: BBCS)

Mahon has been attempting to ramp up C4’s streaming presence ever since taking over as CEO in 2017 and admitted in November that the broadcaster would likely need to use its £75m credit facility this year amid tough market conditions.

The broadcaster has been in the spotlight in the UK for months, having all but stopped commissioning as it plots a path through its budget squeeze.

At present it commissions all its programming through indies, meaning its commissioning freeze has had a deep impact on many UK producers.

However, the new UK media bill is likely to enable it to produce in-house as well as owning content, opening up greater revenue raising opportunities.

The broadcaster has already moved into running its own FAST channels in the US and last year joined the BBC, ITV and Channel 5 to create Freely, a free TV service set to launch in 2024 that will allow viewers to watch live TV over broadband.