Channel 4 boss Alex Mahon’s pay jumped by a quarter to £1.5 million last year, while low-paid freelancer bore the brunt of cutbacks at the broadcaster.
Mahon was handed £750,000 in bonuses, for a year where revenue slipped by 2% to £1.14 billion. Channel 4 barely made a surplus, or profit, for the year, as this fell from £101 million to just £3 million.
Finances are expected to look worse this year as advertisers reduce their spend. Analysts expect ad revenue to fall by between 10% and 20% over the first half of this year.
That has led to cuts, with programmes like Four Weddings, SAS Who Dares Wins and The Big Narstie Show being cancelled recently, with other shows facing a reduction in the number of episodes produced. Those cuts have left many freelancers without work.
After spending a record £713 million on content in 2022, the channel suggested it would focus its budget going forward on work that will help it meet its targets for 2025: reaching two billion streaming views, getting 30% of ad revenue from digital and making 10% of its revenue from sources other than ads.
“Following the macroeconomic headwinds we saw during the second half of 2022, the outlook remains challenging into 2023, with trading in the first five months indicating a difficult TV ad market this year,” Channel 4 said. “Our increasingly diversified revenue base and strong balance sheet, combined with a focused approach to cost control and cash management, ensure that we can continue to prioritise investment that supports driving progress towards our 2025 strategic targets.”
In 2022, the number of streaming views dipped to 1.4 billion, digital made up 22% of ad revenue and non-advertising made up 11% of overall revenue.
Chief operating officer Jonathan Allan made £986,000 in 2022 and chief content officer Ian Katz made £845,000, both also up from 2021.
Mahon can earn a maximum of £1.3 million this year.
Channel 4 faced threats of privatisation through most of 2022, before plans were abandoned at the start of this year.
