Duncan Prezzies

Lets hope Channel 4  chief executive Andy Duncan  had  a great Christmas because it will be downhill all the way from New Year onwards.

The trouble is this. Duncan, former marketing director of  the BBC, has had  the great misfortune of getting what he wanted.  For the past year Duncan has  tried, sometimes with with the greatest difficulty, to persuade the world that Channel 4 faced the bleakest of futures. 

Nobody really believed  him. There was more than a whiff of  deliberate financial engineering to make sure that Channel 4  profits disappeared just in time to persuade the Government that external help was needed in some form.

Now come the Credit Crunch and the collapse in advertising  revenue and  Channel 4 has a  genuine crisis on its hands. There is a severe danger that the commercial broadcaster has cried wolf one time too many.

 This time the matter is likely to be taken out of  Channel  4 hands.

Everyone from Ofcom, the communications regulator to the Department of Media, Culture  and  Sport believes  that the BBC should never be allowed to be the sole provider  of public  service broadcasting in the UK.

Therefore something has to be done to save-guard the future of the home of programmes such as Channel 4  News, Unreported World and Dispatches.

The problem  is that solutions that might have been acceptable to Channel 4  such as being handed a slice  of  the BBC's licence fee income or  a straight government subsidy now look unlikely.

And  if the  Government were to think of handing BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the Corporation, over to Channel 4  the BBC's lawyers  would rapidly become very busy.

In turn Channel 4  has rejected  outright moves by the BBC to co-operate with other  broadcasters such as Channel  4 to produce  eventual savings or  extra income of up to £120 million a year.

So the last "solution"  standing?  A  merger between Channel 4 and FIVE.

It was  never  a great idea but now  it may be the only practical help on offer.

Unfortunately it was  Andy Duncan who killed off the initial concept of the merger soon after becoming chief  executive of Channel 4. He may now have to get used to the idea.

Happy Christmas Andy.

ends               

X Factor

The X Factor  may be a huge success - but it's time for something fundamental to  change. The audiences are great for ITV.  The money is fantastic  for  Simon Cowell who will have a  number one Christmas hit with winner Alexandra Burke's cover of  Leonard Cohen's  Hallelujah.  The song suits her range.

We can even get used to the tears and emotion.

What we should never get used to it the unnecessary element of freak show introduced into the final by ITV producers.

It is just about barely acceptable in the very early stages of the show to film all those no-hopers who can neither sing  nor dance nor indeed do anything at all other than make themselves ridiculous. Many are delusional about their talents if not out-right mentally ill.

It would be kinder to protect some of them from the unfortunate delusion that they might somehow  have talent.

A small taste of dying hopes in a competition that is open to all might  just pass muster even though it smells more of the Coliseum in Rome than the West End.

But to  round up all the no-hopers, bring them back, and put them in  a central slot in the final of the competition singing I Believe In Angels is cruelty of  a rare order.

For them there never will be angels and ITV executives should be thoroughly  ashamed  of themselves.

Over at Strictly  Come  Dancing they may get in  terrible  tangles over the voting arrangements.  But at least they don't peddle human freak shows as entertainment.

edfns