Warning shot

It may be true that privatising Channel 4 would now have far less an effect on British broadcasting compared to what would have been the case if it was privatised ten or more years ago, but a fully private Channel 4 would have extreme difficulty living up to any remaining public service obligations. Just look at what has happened to ITV in recent years.

Although Channel 4 appears to be just another commercial broadaster at times (its greatest downfall), you can ultimately wave goodbye to 40-or-so minutes of serious and uncompromised peaktime news, plus programmes like Dispatches may not have the ultimate integrity that they currently enjoy, even if additional safeguards attempt to preserve their character.

Privatising Channel 4 could also have a knock-on effect amongst small independent television producers, since it could be the case that a private Channel 4 could end up commissioning less risky programming from a smaller pool of favoured independent producers; the likes of Endemol could profit at the expense of the one-man operations.

One suspicion is that - depending on exactly when the report was drafted - the very prospect of privatising Channel 4 could have just been included as an option simply to serve as a warning to Channel 4 in the aftermath of the Celebrity Big Brother/Shilpa Shetty fiasco that they could be privatised if the quality of the channel's programming fails to improve.

But such an assumption could point to a degree of ignorance in relation to exactly how modern television works if that happened to be the case, although there is still the probability that the very thought of privatising C4 would not have occured to politicians if racism hadn't reared its head in the Big Brother house earlier this year.

If Gordon Brown does take the ultimate decision to privatise Channel 4, it could show that he either doesn't watch much television himself or that he fails to appreciate the basic concept of public service broadcasting.

Or, alternatively, that he and/or the Government are simply desperate for the cash, regardless of the consequences.