About 4IP

On average people now spend over 12 hours a week online, three quarters of which is at home.

The amount of time that 16-24s spend online at home has increased by over 50% in the last two years alone.

Today, 20% of people identify the internet as the communications service they would find it most hard to live without.

Source: Ofcom (March 2008)

Delivering effective, high quality public service media in an increasingly digital age is still pioneer territory and a real challenge (see Ofcom's Second Public Service Broadcasting Review).

Channel 4 has decided to take up that challenge in a radical way by forming the 4 Innovation for the Public (4iP) fund.

The 4iP Fund aims to deliver publicly valuable content and services on digital media platforms with significant impact and in sustainable ways. It represents one of the biggest and most exciting calls-to-action for new and emergent digital media companies in the UK.

And for Channel 4 it’s part of a critical process of evolution: from a publisher broadcaster into a multiplatform network; from a commissioner of TV programmes into an investor in original interactive media products & services (see the Next on 4 web site).