Channel 4 in the time of COVID: The first year in Leeds

Sinead Rocks, Channel 4

Sinead Rocks, MD Nations & Regions at Channel 4, explains how far the broadcaster has come since its high-profile move to Leeds last year – and how it’s weathered the COVID storm.

This piece is published in Prolific North’s Northern Agency Guide – our first print product. Find out more about getting a copy here.

 

In autumn 2019, Channel 4 embarked on its most significant transformation since its creation. New creative hubs were opened in Bristol and Glasgow and a national HQ was established in Leeds with plans to base 300 staff within the nations and regions in the months ahead. Morale outside of London was high – new talent meant new ideas quickly started to come through and with so many commissioners now based in different parts of the UK, we were excited by the potential to reshape our relationships with indies in the nations and regions.

It wasn’t all plain sailing; external expectations were high right from the off yet we knew this was about long-term change, not immediate large-scale impact. Internally, the challenges were equally significant; once the excitement of our launch events had passed, we were left to grapple with the logistical challenges that inevitably come with the transformation to a multi-site organisation.

It feels bizarre to write this now, but at the start of 2020, a disproportionate amount of my time was spent listening to complaints about Skype… at its best it was seen as a necessary evil and at worst, it had the potential to actually isolate Nations & Regions staff as there could have been a danger that some overloaded colleagues might be tempted to hold meetings without them rather than wrestle with the tech.

Then Covid came… and as the shutters came down on every one of our offices, we quickly realised that face-to-face meetings were a thing of the past

It’s fair to say that in those initial days, the impact was most sharply felt by our London teams; keeping the channels on air whilst everyone was working from home was undoubtedly the first challenge. Then the rest came thick and fast; sales teams watched their markets shrivel, finance colleagues immediately felt the pain and our Director of Programmes Ian Katz found himself staring down the barrel of a hastily emptying schedule…

Channel 4’s response was swift; exec and non-exec board members took voluntary pay cuts, budgets were significantly reduced across the organisation and around 10% of our workforce was furloughed. Ian’s commissioning teams went into overdrive – working with indies across the UK to assess what could and couldn’t still be made in this strange new world; a hugely difficult process for many in the sector.

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Nations & Regions indies rose to the challenges; a superhuman effort from Candour Productions saw A Day in the Life of Coronavirus Britain turned round in record time and Oxford-based Quicksilver produced Britain’s Coronavirus Catastrophe and The Country that Beat The Virus. Glasgow’s Raise The Roof ensured that Kirsty Allsopp managed to keep crafting. True North’s Devon and Cornwall – made pre-pandemic for More 4 – was given a main channel TX to help fill the schedule. It did much more than that, becoming our highest rating new non-Bake Off 8pm series for three years.

And as the months passed, we got to grips with what many have referred to as ‘the new normal’. Working with the National Film and Television School we arranged a four-week virtual training programme for out-of-London indies and freelancers, keen to ensure that our commitments to the Nations & Regions didn’t slip. The advertising market started to pick up and the commissioning team were able to start planning further ahead. 

The majority of furloughed staff returned and we are now planning the careful reopening of our bases. We’re also trying to figure out what we’ve learned from this unprecedented time and how it can help shape what we do in the future. Some have said that in the short term, video conferencing seemed to level the playing field; suddenly it didn’t matter whether you were a London-based indie or a Leeds one… your access to commissioners was the same.

But others said that virtual pitching is much harder than face to face so in the future, there’s room for both approaches. Similarly, pre-COVID we would never have considered arranging four weeks of virtual training but doing it this way enabled 1,300 attendees to 43 sessions with 93% saying they were interesting and insightful. Doing this kind of thing completely online is unlikely to become commonplace for us but virtual training will definitely become part of the mix.

Working from home definitely has its place and I’m glad that we have now proved that to ourselves. But the vast majority of staff are looking forward to getting back into our buildings – we’ve missed each other! And I’m looking forward to getting our Leeds HQ back up and running – and our Nations & Regions plans back to full throttle.

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