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.
