A row has broken out over the government’s role in Channel 4 management appointments after it blocked a minority ethnic woman from joining the broadcaster’s board.
Rozina Breen, a former senior BBC executive who runs the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, was put forward as a preferred candidate by Ofcom to take up one five vacancies as a non-executive director at Channel 4.
Ofcom is responsible for finding, vetting and appointing Channel 4 non-executive directors. However, in an unusual move the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, who has the final say in appointments, rejected Breen without giving a reason, in a move first reported by the news site Deadline.
Of the five new non-executive directors appointed to the board on Monday, four are white, prompting criticism from Channel 4’s chair, Sir Ian Cheshire, who said the selection lagged behind the broadcaster’s diversity targets.
One of the five appointees is the chief executive of Boots, Sebastian James, an Old Etonian who was a member of the Bullingdon Club alongside Lord Cameron, with whom he has gone on holiday.
In an internal memo first reported by the Telegraph, Cheshire said: “These appointments will improve representation on the board but do not yet meet the levels of representation throughout the rest of the organisation. Appointments to the board are not ultimately in our control due to procedural reasons but we are committed to continuing to push for further progress.”
The new board appointments also include the advertising veteran Dame Annette King, the Warner Records UK managing director Alex Burford and the entrepreneur Debbie Wosskow. Tom Adeyoola, a technology entrepreneur, is the only minority ethnic appointment.
This means that 14 of the 15 members of Channel 4’s board are white – equivalent to about 93%. In comparison, 18% of its workforce is from an ethnically diverse background, although it aims to increase this figure to 20%.
Four of the new board members joined the broadcaster’s board on Monday for three-year terms, while Burford will start in June. The recruitment search was run by the executive search agency Russell Reynolds.
Cheshire sat on a recruitment panel that interviewed candidates, which was headed by the Ofcom chair, Lord Grade, who is also a former Channel 4 boss.
Breen, who spent 13 years at the BBC including as its head of north, told Deadline: “There were clear criteria and a process for application. If one is put forward by Ofcom as one of the recommended candidates and then seemingly rejected by [the culture secretary], that feels opaque and also problematic.”
In 2016, the government was criticised for blocking Althea Efunshile, a former senior executive at Arts Council England, from joining Channel 4’s board. After a backlash she was appointed but in 2021 the government blocked her reappointment, as well as that of the film producer Uzma Hasan, leaving Channel 4 with an all-white board.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: “DCMS is absolutely committed to advancing equality of opportunity in its public appointments, to ensure that boards of public bodies benefit from a range of diverse perspectives and are representative of the people they serve.
“Appointments to the Channel 4 board were made by Ofcom following a fair and open competition, with approval from the DCMS secretary of state.”
Channel 4 has told its 1,200 strong workforce to expect job cuts, as it seeks to accelerate its shift to streaming amid the worst TV advertising downturn in 15 years. The round of redundancies, first reported by the Guardian and expected affect as many as 200 jobs, come as the broadcaster braces for two years of financial losses after three years of surpluses up to 2022. It has cut back on commissioning to extend budgets.
A year ago, the government abandoned its plan to privatise Channel 4 after opposition from most of the media industry.
