[SWLUG] BBC's "iPlayer"

[Chris M. Jackson]

On 6/28/07, Dave Cridland <dave at cridland.net> wrote:
> On Thu Jun 28 16:42:01 2007, Richard John wrote:
> > Channel 4 is not publicly owned - they receive public funding, but
> > they are
> > not publicly owned!
> >
> >
> Pretty sure that the Channel Four Television Corporation is
> state-owned, in the same way as the BBC is. It used to be a
> subsiduary of the IBA, when that existed. AFAIK, it's not publically
> funded at all, however - it gets its funds from advertising and other
> ventures, and used to have some kind of weird cross-funding from ITV
> (although I think that's stopped).

Channel Four Television Corporation indeed *is* a publicly-owned
company, but *does not* receive public funds (the Big Brother
shitstorm would have reached a whole new level if it did).  It was set
up in 1992 to handle C4 when the IBA was dismantled, to operate
independently but with a "safety net" in place just in case - it
proved to be viable, so the cord was cut in the late 90s.

Originally, it was part of the IBA, and advertising was managed by the
local ITV companies - in the early days, they had difficulty in
selling the space so frequently 3-minute ad breaks would contain only
one or two adverts padded by long "follows shortly" holding slides.

-- 
Chris Jackson
Now with enhanced time-wasting capabilities
Non-Terminal Boredom: http://www.xpns.co.uk/life/