Believe it or not, last night's announcements may actually be very reassuring for Channel 4 and signify that at least some government ministers still have faith in the channel. We may never know whether Gordon Brown was serious relating to a recent threat to privatise Channel 4 or whether there is a cabinet split between ministers on the issue of privatisation.
Although Tessa Jowell has warned Channel 4 to be on its best behaviour, the fact that Channel 4's digital switchover costs will be obtained from the licence fee means that any subsequent proposal to privatise the channel would raise objections from other commercial broadcasters since they're not going to directly benefit from any digital switchover fund allocation.
Putting Channel 4 in a privileged position - at least in the short term - means that as long as Channel 4 does not land itself another 'Shilpagate' scandal, privatisation is likely to be off the menu for at least the next five years. However the channel will now have the tricky task of maintaining some semblance of public service remit despite some intense financial pressures.
The recent success of ITV's Britain's Got Talent forced Big Brother's viewing figures below 2 million at times, which does tend to suggest that roughly 30% of Channel 4's programming budget is spent on something which is not only looking very tired but is now delivering a poor return apart from perhaps delivering some of that specific demographic that advertisers lust after.
