4iP Blog

At the start of last week, Channel 4 announced a significant cost reduction initiative. This reflects the long term changes in media industry business models, and the more immediate impact of a down turn in advertising revenues.

At the end of last week, Ofcom announced its next stage of its PSB review, acknowledging the urgency of finding a funding settlement for Channel 4, and re-enforcing the importance of Channel 4’s multi-platform future.

And finally, Tom Loosemore arrived on Monday to take over the reins of 4iP and ensure we open for business later this month.

Each of these is worth some commentary.

First, it’s been suggested that Channel 4’s commitment to 4iP is being reduced. This is categorically not the case. 4iP remains a strategic priority, and it remains our intention to spend around £20m during the next three years. That said, we have not yet confirmed our budget for 2009, and we may need to phase some of our plans differently. But that’s a pragmatic response to the severity and suddenness of the current economic turbulence.

Second, Ofcom’s PSB review document contained some interesting perspectives for what 4iP is setting out to do. Their recent consumer research suggested that there is a problem in discovering new content online. Specifically, respondents “felt that when using the internet the likelihood of having their views challenged or their knowledge expanded ‘by chance’ was minimal.” Channel 4 is proud of its heritage in broadcasting in bringing new talent, ideas and perspectives to audiences, and challenging them to see the world differently. We are passionately interested in exploring how we can continue to do this on new platforms, in a world in which millions of people can create and share content which has public value. Cracking this problem would be one of the most profound contributions 4iP could make.

And finally, Tom’s arrival is long overdue. We’ve focused most of our attention so far on the partnerships, operations and processes which will ensure 4iP’s success. It’s great to have Tom on board to lead the project, and he’s already galvanising our thinking on creativity and commissioning.
All the pieces of the puzzle are now coming together, and we’ll be open for business later this month. Better crack on then.

Tom Loosemore has agreed to join Channel 4 to head up the 4iP project.

Tom has an outstanding range of experience in public service new media, and has a huge passion for the areas which 4iP is setting out to explore. His various stints as both a thinker and doer include Ofcom, the BBC, the Cabinet Office and mysociety. He’s also got experience of both internet start ups and larger media companies. If you want to see some of the projects he’s been involved with, take a look at upmystreet, theyworkforyou and showusabetterway.
He will be joining in late September, and accelerating the momentum that we’ve made behind the scenes over the last few months.
The official press release is here, and he’ll no doubt be a regular blogger on the 4iP site as soon as the dust has settled.
It took us longer than expected to make this appointment, but you can’t rush these things. Thanks for bearing with us in the meantime.
Jon Gisby

Andy Duncan (Channel 4’s CEO) was on a panel with Sir Tim Berners Lee and Charles Leadbetter at NESTA on Tuesday, at which Sir Tim’s new web science initiative research was discussed. Sir Tim’s slides are here and the video of the event is available on the NESTA site. Sir Tim later gave an interview covering everything from openness to Google and Gordon Brown to Channel 4 news which you can find on the Channel 4 news site.

The debate ranged far and wide. Sir Tim’s overall thesis was that the web had grown and developed by being free and open, but that as a result it had evolved in unexpected ways and now ought to be properly studied. He likened it to the odd tangle of things that you get when you eventually find the object that’s blocking your sink: underneath it all there’s something with a clear structure (such as a fish bone) but all sorts of accretions have collected round it. So if the web, and the interactions it supports, is to continue to thrive, its organic development needs to be better understood before its too late.

The panel discussion debated whether the first decade or so of the web’s existence has been an unsustainable aberation. Charlie’s recent reading has included a book on the English Civil War, when the Levellers challenged the existing hierarchies, only to have the monarchy restored ten years later. He identified 2Gether08 (which 4IP was part of) as a gathering of modern day Levellers, and wondered if the new ways of thinking and doing that were discussed at 2Gether would continue to flourish, or whether they too would be curtailed as governments and corporations find ways of reasserting themselves. Andy Duncan took up the same theme by highlighting the difficult trade-offs that the web is creating between freedom of speech and protection of privacy, diversity and like-mindedness, and old vs new business models. It’s these challenges which we hope to explore a bit with 4IP, by combining the lessons and scale of a broadcaster like Channel 4 with the vitality and participation of a new generation of creatives and socially minded entrepreneurs.

Perhaps the best lessons for 4iP came from the wrap up remarks from NESTA’s CEO, Jonathan Kestenbaum. He made reference to Sir Tim Berners Lee’s boss at CERN who had ‘not said no’ and created the environment in which the web could be invented. His advice for innovation initiatives, and organisations, was to commit to the journey and provide the resource, but not prescribe the outcome at the outset. That’s very much the spirit in which we’re embarking on the 4iP pilot over the next couple of years.

Great Minds Think Differently

Reflecting 4iP’s commitment to partnership, we want to involve experts with a wide range of relevant experience to help us shape the 4iP pilot. We are therefore announcing the 4iP ThinkTank.

The ThinkTank will comprise a range of people from various backgrounds and with particular areas of expertise and experience related to the 4iP project. These could include finance and venture capital, new media start-ups, social entrepreneurship, technology and platform innovation, and experience of working with public finance partners. We also hope it will include people who are inspired by what we’re setting out to do: creating new and sustainable ways of delivering public service media for a post-broadcast world.

The objective of the ThinkTank is to provide expertise and insight into the projects that 4iP is backing and to help share the lessons we learn with a wider audience. (Its role will not be to decide which projects we back, or how they are funded.)

If you feel you have the experience, expertise and drive to contribute and would like to be considered as a member of the 4iP ThinkTank, please email, in the first instance, up to 200 words capturing why you are interested and what you’d be bringing to the project to: