The battle for TV news supremacy? Bradby’s talking ‘nonsense’, says Snow
Channel 4’s veteran presenter weighs into his rivals’ argument over late night bulletins
IN RECENT weeks, the television news jungle has rung with the calls of the silverbacks angrily marking their territories. First, Tom Bradby, the new host of ITV’s News at Ten, dared to challenge the BBC’s alpha male, Huw Edwards, by suggesting that the corporation should vacate the 10pm news slot. In return, Edwards hit back at the young pretender, taking to Twitter to shoot down ITV’s claims that its viewing figures showed a Bradby bounce.
Now, the most grizzled of all the news beasts has entered the fray. Jon Snow, who has hosted Channel 4’s flagship bulletin for a quarter of a century, has a message for the pair: “Nobody gives a tinker’s cuss how many viewers anybody has,” he booms. “The question is, are they any good?”
The 68-year-old, who says he does not watch a 10pm bulletin, has been coaxed out of the studio and on to the sofas in the corner of the Channel 4 News office, to speak to The Sunday
Telegraph. We are here, nominally, to talk about the fact that he is stepping down after 35 years from his role as chairman of the New Horizon Youth Centre, a London charity that helps around 3,000 young, homeless people a year. But soon we are into the real purpose of our conversation.
On Wednesday, David Cameron announced that the Government would consider plans to privatise Channel 4. It is a proposal that many in the television industry think would destroy the mischief-making remit of the broadcaster, which is state-owned, but receives not a penny from the public purse, and reinvests its profits in programming.
“I think privatisation would be a mistake,” Snow says. “We cost the public nothing, the amount of money that could be realised is frankly not that much, and in realising it there is a very serious danger that what is special about Channel 4 will be lost. You tell me of any other entity that can generate £900million of revenues a year without costing the taxpayer a bean. We even pay our taxes. We’re putting in as well! There’s no way that you can say that Channel 4 is any kind of drag on the economy. It’s a pretty sublime deal.”
Channel 4 was launched by the Thatcher government in 1982 as an engine of innovation and an outlet for alternative viewpoints. In an industry in which the former prime minister is not particularly popular, Snow caused an audience of television luminaries to draw breath this year, when he praised the Iron Lady while picking up a Bafta fellowship. Mrs Thatcher, he says, would not want Channel 4 to be sold.
“When I received my Bafta, I set out a number of people to be grateful to,” he recounts. “I mentioned my family, and then I mentioned Margaret Thatcher, and there was an audible gasp. I said, ‘Let’s not forget, Mrs Thatcher gave birth to Channel 4.’ Well with Willie [Whitelaw, her home secretary], but you need a Willie to give birth, as she pointed out.
“We are the product of Maggie and Willie. And I think she would not want us wound up, or indeed changed. I think what she conceived was right. She felt clearly that the texture of British broadcasting needed a kick in the pants, and if Channel 4 gives life a bit of a kick in the pants, that’s what it’s for.”
David Abraham, Channel 4’s chief executive, has suggested that a privatised broadcaster would need to redirect £200million a year out of its programming budget into shareholder dividends. The risk, says Snow, is that
Channel 4 News would be a casualty of the cuts. “They would not be able to run to the costs of doing what we do,” he says. “I don’t think a commercial entity could afford a one-hour news bulletin, which doesn’t exist in any other English-speaking country.”
While the presenter refuses to say that the Conservative proposals are ideologically motivated, there are plenty on the Tory Right who see Channel 4 as a bastion of Leftism and its news as biased. Some are relishing the chance to neuter it. Snow rejects the charge. “If you read the remit, we are actually charged with being different from what other bulletins are showing,” he says.
“If you look at BBC One, ITV and Sky, I bet you on quite a few days out of 365 you’ll find them running exactly the same stories in exactly the same order. You won’t find that with us. There are a whole plethora of ways in which what we offer is different, fundamentally. I don’t think we are particularly Left-wing. What we are is particularly deep.”
There is a hint that, despite having a reputation as an incorrigible Leftie, Snow was not too disappointed with the previous, coalition government, and he says that he has many friends on the Right. “If you look in my inbox today you’ll see me being invited by a prominent Tory MP to come and address a Tory gig, just before Christmas. I enjoy very warm relations with a large number of Conservatives.”
Curled up on the sofa, the presenter is sporting a particularly lurid lime green combination of socks and tie. What he is not wearing is a poppy. Aeons ago he coined the term “poppy fascism” to reflect the social pressure to sport the paper flower on air.
“They died so that we might be free to decide whether to wear one or not,” he repeats, wearily. “It so happens that I choose to wear a poppy on Remembrance Sunday, as I always have done, and if you come with me to church on Sunday, you’ll find me with my poppy on. My dad was a bishop. The idea that we strutted around for weeks beforehand wearing a poppy – he’d think we were bonkers.”
Although Snow has been at ITN, the company that provides ITV and Channel 4 with news, for four decades, he is nevertheless passionate about the BBC. He rejects calls by Bradby for the corporation to slim down its news operations, describing the ITV host’s claim that the BBC is squeezing out rivals as “complete nonsense”.
“I don’t think that people are being squeezed because the BBC is so big,” he exclaims. “Listen, the way not to be squeezed is by being excellent, so you have to strive for excellence, which is what they [ITV] are trying every day. They’ll just have to do it a bit harder.”
‘Nobody gives a tinker’s cuss how many viewers anybody has. The question is, are they any good?’