Channel 4 - 40 Years Broadcasting This Month

JupiterKid

So Channel 4 is broadcasting for 40 years - hard as it is to believe - this month. 👍👍

C4 was the TV station that showed material the other channels at the time it was launched would rarely or never broadcast, including LGBT-themed programmes and other shows aimed to cater to minority groups in the UK (and the East coast of Ireland but not by design).

It was a window to another world growing up in a backward, stifling 1980s conservative Catholic Ireland and my sisters and myself were so pleased that along with BBC and ITV we could watch it on our TV in suburban Dublin.

Channel 4 gave us the iconic game show Countdown, soap opera Brookside, alternative pop music show The Tube, the ambitious Citizen 2000 (charting the lives every second year of a group of babies born in 1982), Eurotrash and later on, Big Brother. Channel 4 News is widely considered to be among the very best, in-depth, news programme in the world.

Also lots of uncensored foreign films with nudity and steamy sex scenes! Lol 😁

Of course, Channel 4 seems to have lost its way in the past 20 or so years and is no longer really the groundbreaking, daring channel it was when launched in November 1982. The iconic multicoloured “4” logo which disassembled and reassembled by GCI was amazing for a then 7 year old me to watch!

What are your memories of watching Channel 4 growing up, or in more recent years? Do you think in this era of endless channels, viewer fragmentation and online streaming that there is still a place for Channel 4?

https://youtu.be/VlitBy_6Sok

As a guy who was a teenager in the 90's I've nothing only positive memories of the Channel 4 scheduling. Channel 4 News and Dispatches were hard-hitting current affairs in a world that was increasingly moving towards 24 hour news cycles and permanent outrage.

It also had Beavis and Butthead, Eurotrash, and lots of late night French movies with gratuitous nudity.

BrianD3

I was too young to appreciate it in the 1980s - I do remember at the time thinking it was rubbish as it didn't have shows like Knight Rider or The A Team. Also my conservative parents thought it was weird rubbish.

When the 90s arrived and I was a teenager with a VCR - different story entirely. Everything from American Football to excellent documentaries (Cutting Edge etc) to The Word and Eurotrash. Classic Trucks, Classic Cars. Foreign language and cult movies. The Red Light Zone. And then in the late 90s early 00s, Brass Eye and the notorious Paedogeddon special.

L1011

One of the niche audiences C4 catered for was the Irish in the UK. Showed the GAA finals and a cut-down repeat of the Late Late (which Michael Parkinson was astounded to find was much longer and live when he appeared on it).

I was sure they had shown one of the Irish soaps for a while but it would appear I imagined that.

gipi

Don't forget that Channel 4 introduced us to live Italian football! Before the pay TV channels grabbed it.

ThePentagon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058271135/channel-4-40-years-broadcasting-this-month

"Do you think in this era of endless channels, viewer fragmentation and online streaming that there is still a place for Channel 4?"

Not really. Channel 4's best days were in the last millennium. Frankly, I can't think of anything radical or interesting it has broadcast in the past 20 years. There is something rather desperate about its attempts to regain cutting-edge relevance by broadcasting programmes based purely on shock value (e.g. the Jimmy Carr art destruction programme). Global network connectivity means people don't require C4 for a glimpse into lesser-known worlds/topics, at least not compared to as they did circa pre-2000.

That said I do have good memories of watching C4 back in the 90s - e.g. Crystal Maze, Whose Line is it Anyway?, Football Italia, American sitcoms (shows like Frasier and Friends were broadcast on C4 before any other terrestrial channel) The Word, and (needless to say in those pre-internet days) Eurotrash 😄

breezy1985

Used have some amazing foreign language films late at night. Never forget when I saw the original Ring on C4 and it blew my mind (best horror ever). Would have never seen stuff like that back then without C4.

For Father Ted and Black Books alone it deserves legendary status.

Also loved Adan & Joe when I was younger also Eurotrash😊 and later on Skins (original cast). Probably forgetting a few more too.

They made two seasons of this show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3gxwIqqzB4

Gregor Samsa

I remember being really excited on the day it launched that I was witnessing the very beginning of a TV station - and one that was offering something totally new. I was 9 at the time, so its programming wasn’t exactly aimed at me, but I grew into it over the next couple of decades. I always loved the logo and the idents.

blackbox

Still has the best evening news programme.

buried

Channel f**kin four. lol. This is the same channel that spewed out the first series of "Big Brother", yeah? Forgive me if my rose tinted glasses are completely covered in Apprentice Donald Trump laughter vomit.

Panthro

It gave us the classics - Eurotrash, Passengers, The Word.

Oh and most importantly, Rocko's Modern Life.

riclad

Channel 4 commissions most of its programs from independent production companys. It has created more original programs than than most uk channels. Eg bake off uk. First. Dates .google box . It was created to provide programs aimed at at minoritys. When it started alot of its programs were aimed at a young hip audience. Eg the word. Big brother. It was certainly different from bbv or itv. It did show some good comedys like black books

Its not so important when most people have acess to 100s of channels

and netflix or youtube

Remember back in the day a friend from school calling me on the house phone as it was then, we were 13 or 14 and just after discovering music that year and him telling me to turn on Channel 4 and there was Rage Against the Machine doing their f you I won't do what you tell me around 4pm on a Friday afternoon !!!!

I much preferred Channel 4's Glastonbury coverage vs BBC.

xxxxxxl

Pfff S4C was where it's at if you had an Aerial.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855606#Comment_119855606

The little mermaid or the washing powder? 😅

JupiterKid

Channel 4 really was great in its heyday - its first two decades really, the 1980s and the 1990s. Brookside, almost right from its first episode in 1982 was the soap that non-soap watching people would love to watch... 😁👍👍

https://youtu.be/-7Z_CmZgbT4

FunLover18

All4 is one of the best free streaming services available. Sure some people will get huffy about the ads but there's so much content.

Channel 4 also has a rather epic and very iconic musical signature called Fourscore.

Always seemed a bit of a waste not to use more of this in their current branding. It’s one of the most recognisable pieces ever composed for a UK TV station.

https://youtu.be/ml9Betr3mZg

Just going back up the thread, it commissioned UK Big Brother from Endemol, and in its defence it was a highly experimental, very unusual and even risky piece of TV in its original run.

It ran on for too long and became rather cliched, but it you go back to the first series, that was just really a very strange piece of TV, almost a live psych experiment and nobody had seen anything like it before. It turned into a commercial monster, but that wasn’t really the original intent.

BBC commissioned The Apprentice. That has nothing to do with C4.

The J Stands for Jay

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855362#Comment_119855362

I used to enjoy the late late toy show with all the singing and dancing cut out of it

northknife

I think it was the first channel to show The Life Of Brian.

And there wasn't a thing the little old Catholic Church could do about it only preach from the pulpit.

BrianD3

The Channel 4 news theme is a nice piece of music - and crucially, I don't think they have ever "messed" with it which is the sort of thing that other channels do, trying to modernise iconic themes by making them more poppy/jazzy etc.

I have a lot of old home recorded VHS tapes, my own and those given to me by relatives etc. I like looking at old programmes and ads. Whenever I come across something that l haven't seen before or forgot about and which looks interesting/good and NOT horribly dated, it is usually a Channel 4 programme. If C4s 80s/90s output was better than the other channels at the time of original broadcast, it seems even more so now looking back.

griffin100

I do remember being happy to see this on screen as a young teenager watching Channel 4

It meant boobs and sometimes more..

Hangdogroad

Grew up in RTE only land but I remember a lot of drama/ mini-series and tv films which Channel 4 collaborated on with RTE which wouldn't have had a hope in hell of being made if it wasn't for CH4s backing

Only got to see Channel 4 proper by the late 90s when I'd moved out and the place I was renting had multichannel. I think its glory days were behind it by then but there was still good stuff on. I think the first nail in the coffin was Big Brother.

BrianD3

Another C4 show that has stood the test of time IMO is The White Room from the mid 90s. It isn't iconic like The Tube, was short lived and is probably mostly forgotten at this stage. The performances were generally very good. Several are on YouTube e.g.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QjdJjX5poKw

bodhrandude

I remember when it launched, they showed a very controversial documentary that converted a lot of people to vegetarianism, including my two sisters. Landmark programmes like Boys of the Black Stuff, the legendary Pot Nights, with Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke and docs about Amsterdam. Sitcoms like Spaced and film productions like Withnail and I.

miamee

Another big favourite would have been The Big Breakfast though perhaps not very groundbreaking! Chris Evans, Gaby Roslin, Paula Yates, Denise Van Outen, Johnny Vaughan, Zig & Zag all presented on it over the years.

Back when access was limited and we only had the few channels, Channel 4 was like a portal into another universe especially late at night for the films they would show. Then as already mentioned the likes of The Word and Eurotrash also kept me company on many a late night of babysitting - and then flicked over to something else as the parents I was babysitting for came home 😂

Sleepy

All4 is still the template for how to do an on-line streaming platform imho. While I'd personally consider much of their output to be rubbish (Hollyoaks, their reality and dating programmes etc. that's kind of the point of Ch4 - to produce content that wouldn't make it on the BBC with a particular focus on minority interest subjects). They still make some great content though: The Last Leg (want to get young people interested in current affairs? Make it funny!), Grand Designs, Countdown, good News Coverage, lots of documentaries and their drama division have been knocking it out of the park for the past few years with stuff like It's a Sin, This is England and Film4 producing some of the biggest hits to come out of UK over the past 20 years at least.

I certainly watch more of their content than RTE's over the years. They actually make for a depressing comparison if you check their financial numbers for 2021:

Channel 4 have a staff of 992 and generated a turnover of £1.16 billion

RTE have a staff of 1,866, generated a turnover of €148.3m (including the License Fee)

Sure, C4 has a bigger audience since it's UK based but they don't get any License Fee money and still have ten times the turnover of RTE with almost exactly half the headcount.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119858558#Comment_119858558

You're trying to compare things that are not comparable.

They've almost ten times the turnover as they have over ten times the potential audience.

They also have a very minimal PSO requirement and make absolutely none of their own shows. Every single show is bought in. This is intentional, it was started by Thatcher as a method of producing higher quality private-sector made shows.

RTE have all the staff required to make TV shows, as they make a substantial element of their schedule themselves. Channel 4 even buy their news from ITN. Their transmission is outsourced, their imaging is outsourced, their subtitling is outsourced. Everything is.

Realistically they're grossly overstaffed at 992!

bodhrandude

Channel 4 was also behind one of the best documentaries about Pink Floyd, Behind The Wall, which talked about the state of the band at the time and featuring for the first time original footage of the Earls Court shows from 1980 and extensive interviews with all the band members, people in production and the entourage personal who helped design the original concept of The Wall into a stage show. Unfortunately YouTube seems to have removed it but worth seeking out or downloading if you can find it, as a closing phase of Waters involvement with Pink Floyd.

This clip is from French TV but is one of the versions of CH 4's Behind the wall.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp4wzr

elperello

Channel 4 provide subscription free Formula One coverage

They can only show highlights because Sky have a stranglehold on the live coverage.

Also All4 is an excellent service available in ROI once you have registered for free.

We are lucky to have access to such a great resource.

Hopefully the Tories don't kill it by selling it off to one of their pals.

It was the place for Tour de France highlights too, Phil Liggett et al.

And did an excellent job on the Horse Racing- not what the stereotypical C4 viewer would be interested in, but a lot of money invested over many years, and knocked BBC, RTE and ITV efforts into a cocked hat.

Countdown before it became bloated, a couple of times Irish youngsters did well made big news over here.

JKerova1

Remember some great comedy shows on C4 in the 90s/2000s. Father Ted, Black Books, Brass Eye. Think AliG started on C4 didn't he? The 11 o'clock show could be pretty good as could Eurotrash and Graham Nortons chat show. Haven't watched it in years though.

Sleepy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119858573#Comment_119858573

While there are certainly differences, I think they're perfectly comparable tbh. It's not as if RTE aren't buying in most of their content from elsewhere either (whether commissioning it from the likes of CoCo Television or paying for the rights to re-air American drama series etc.).

At the end of the day both are media companies that provide content to the public on a range of television stations and online platforms (although admittedly RTE also has radio platforms). When comparing the two in general, however, it's hard to see RTE as anything other than inferior to Channel 4 imo.

Fandymo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119855423#Comment_119855423

It’s a Sin, which came out last year on C4 was absolutely phenomenal

AndyBoBandy

The Red Light Zone on C4 gave me some of the best nights of my teenage years..... this was long before the internet was a thing!

AndyBoBandy

Channel 4 commissioned Father Ted

and that's all that needs to be said really!

BrianD3

Just to confirm that we're not rose tinting here, I picked out a random week of TV schedules from 1994 (week starting 9th Jan) from my hoard of magazines. Obviously a very different era of broadcasting. There were many hours of interesting programmes on C4 that week - Undercover Britain on modern slavery, Cutting Edge on anti social neighbours, Equinox on embryos, Dispatches (no info given) Karachi Kops. Trial and Error. Some decent films. As well as the usual Countdown, The Word, NYPD Blue, Homicide; Life on the Street. etc.

the BBC was good that week too though and gave C4 a run for its money - plenty of docus and investigative stuff.

Even RTE was better than I would have thought.

bodhrandude

Jumping in from the Young Ones thread, some of that team would go onto Channel 4's Comic Strip Presents like The Supergrass, Bad News (Which predates Spinal Tap by a year about a fake heavy metal band) and A Fistful of Traveller Cheques among others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKsNR7F86FM

El Gato De Negocios

To name but a few

The Big Breakfast

TFI Friday

Countdown

Deal or No Deal

Frasier

Beavis and Butthead

The Word

The Babazee

Father Ted

Inbetweeners

Desmonds

Trigger Happy TV

Classic Graham Norton

Adam and Joe

11 o'clock show

Ali G

This is England

It's a Sin

Multiple horror, foreign and independent movies.

All either made by or screened on Channel 4. Imo the most iconic British TV Channel of all time and an absolute game changer in the 90s.

gipi

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119857870#Comment_119857870

Boys from the Black Stuff was a BBC programme, not C4. It was shown on BBC 4 recently as part of their 100th anniversary celebrations.

o1s1n

Anyone remember them playing Japanese animation really late at night? (I think it was originally in 1992 and they did it again around 1995)

Jonathan Ross did a great introduction to Akira. Had a few other greats on like Patlabor - I remember staying up till midnight or so to tape them all.

Edit - looks like it was 1994!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM77Rrnu1Wc

El Gato De Negocios

I remember watching Devil Man and Legend of the Dragon Kings during their anime / manga phase.

recyclops

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119856055#Comment_119856055

Yeah we had a VCR recording of it and I remember the guy introducing pretty much saying the same and it really opened me up to Serie A at the height of its power.

There was a show in the mid 90s called Killer Net I think, a miniseries with Paul bethany that I thought was brilliant but I am sure I am remembering it through rose tinted glasses.

Riddle101

Father Ted was a Channel 4 show so they have my respect

https://youtu.be/6zkL91LzCMc

bodhrandude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119857870#Comment_119857870

I remember the documentary film now it was called The Animals and about animal rights and how human beings treat and use animals, I know a hell of a lot of people influenced by it when it was broadcast on Channel 4's third night and they are still vegetarians to this day. If you can find the film, it can be a gruelling watch in parts. All I could find on YouTube was a trailer clip for it. (I'll put an advisory here, view at your own discretion as there is some nasty bits of animal cruelty or slaughter in the doc and possibly this clip)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjRi_pcuzDM

Capt'n Midnight

They didn't have the budget to go head to head with BBC and ITV for Christmas movies.

So they showed Chinese Ghost Stores or Jackie Chan movies. The opening scene from Police Story with a car chase through a squatters camp was eye-opening.

The Worst Of Hollywood series. Lots of Godzilla.

JupiterKid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119861805#Comment_119861805

Akira blew me away the first time I watched it on Channel 4 in the early 1990s. Channel 4 also aired a few other rather good Japanese anime feature films throughout the 90s.

Strumms

Eurotrash and the Word were of an interest to teenage me…

they also used to have decent live cricket coverage which I believe is to return But I have to go tuning in the fûcker grrrr".

JupiterKid

The Word was just so cool and tried not to take itself too seriously.

Channel 4 also showed The Rocky Horror Picture Show on terrestrial TV for the very first time, back in 1989. My big sister recorded it on tape and I found it about a year later- corrupted an impressionable young 15 year old moi! 😎😁😁

https://youtu.be/bc80tFJpTuo

Riddle101

They also used to show Sunday Night Heat and the odd wrestling PPV back in the late 90s/early 00s if I recall. I taped a bunch of wrestling PPVs on the VCR because of it.