CHANNEL 4’S FUTURE UP FOR DISCUSSION AT CONFERENCE

THE Chairman of Channel 4 Television, Vanni Treves, will be the keynote morning speaker at the VLV Conference in London on November 28.
Channel 4’s public service remit has been strengthened in the past couple of years to include a stronger commitment to regional programming and to the production of original programming.
Treves will review the channel’s history but his main emphasis will be on Channel 4’s future role, funding and mission as a public service broadcaster in the multichannel, digital age.
VLV Chairman, Jocelyn Hay, said: “Although Channel 4 plays an essential role in the ecology of British public service broadcasting it could still be vulnerable to a chancellor looking for a windfall. We look forward to hearing from their chairman Vanni Treves, and to alerting the public to some of the implications the coming White Paper will have for British broadcasting system and for viewers and listeners.”
The future regulatory structure of British broadcasting, the future of the BBC and of public service broadcasting in Britain will be the focus of a Round Table discussion by a panel of distinguished media commentators in the afternoon session from 2-2.30pm. The panel will consider some of the issues surrounding the forthcoming government White Paper on the Regulating Communications, now expected in December, prior to a new Communications Bill covering the regulation of broadcasting, telecommunications and the internet.
The Round Table Panellists will include: Barry Cox, Deputy Chairman, Channel 4; Stephen Whittle, Director, the Broadcasting Standards Commission; Professor Sylvia Harvey, Sheffield Hallam University; Gary Tonge, ITC Director of Engineering; and Alan Yentob, BBC, Director of Drama, Entertainment and Children’s. The panel will be chaired by Elizabeth Smith, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association.
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