Channel 4 to remain publically owned - DCMS

It does if they want to attract and keep employing the best commissioners in the industry.

Ironically moving C4 to Birmingham or similar would end up being more expensive for regional indies as they wouldn't be able to lump all of their commissioner meetings in London together and would instead have to go to the expense of travelling a separate trip to wherever C4 end up.

To be

But then there's the flip side of the coin where the indies in whichever place C4 are moved to won't have the expense of sending their people to London for C4's meetings etc.

If privately owned production companies have to foot the bill of daring to travel outside of London, I'd take that over the publicly owned Channel 4 maintaining grand and expensive Central London headquarters.

Well no I'm saying that regional indies tend to lump as many London-based meetings with multiple channels as they can into a short period so that they can spend less on travel.

Why? C4 is completely funded by advertising. Them being in London isn't costing you anything.

This could well end up having a detrimental effect on regional start-ups as well as a noticeable decline in the quality of programmes on C4 if they can't persuade commissioners to relocate. In fact there's a report published in Broadcast today saying that a number of Glasgow-based indies are against the relocation but would support one or two regionally based commissioners which I think will realistically be what ends up happening.

Yes all those facetime or skypes or even video calls is impossible if you moved to brum.

I would think that whilst C4's main offices might be located outside of London, that C4 will maintain a presence in central London to house the 'creative' people. In much the same way the that BBC's Head off BBC North actually kept himself in London rather than Manchester until he left the BBC.

Trust me you're not getting commissions if you're holding Skypes with commissioners. Pitching TV goes far beyond a simple conversation that can be done via a video link.

My take.
This is grotesque and bending over backwards to the anti-London mouthpieces. Totally pointless.

Channel 4 is a national broadcaster, and the national broadcaster should be based in the capital.

Also, as others have said, it'll be the commissioners and schedulers who will be moving.
Tx'ing of the '4' group of channels will still come from London, as will advertising sales.

It would be naive in the extreme to think that just because Channel 4 are dragged out of the capital and into one floor of an new build office build in Manchester Deansgate or Birmingham's Colmore Row the amount of regional indie commissions will rise as a result...
..It won't. Channel 4 will just green light the best ideas presented to them at pitches. Anyway most Indies Channel 4 use, are owned by larger Indies - most of whom have headquarters located in the capital.

It's still going to be Channel 4 at the end of the day the third biggest broadcaster, so I doubt being in a different city is going to cost them commissions, production companies will just have to make an effort.

I don't really see what is gained from this though.

How it's funded is irrelevant. It's a publicly owned company and should be run efficiently.

I take it that Channel 4 News would be exempt from this proposal? I'm sure it would be costly and awkward for ITN to produce it in a completely different city than their London headquarters.

Channel 4 News is just another commission so would remain at ITN for as long it has the contract.