Jon Snow: Privatising Channel 4 would destroy 'Maggie's baby'

In recent weeks, the television news jungle has rung with the calls of silverback newsreaders angrily marking their territories. First, Tom Bradby, the new host of ITV’s News at Ten, dared to challenge the BBC’s alpha male, Huw Edwards, by suggesting that the corporation should vacate the 10pm news slot. In return, Edwards hit back at the young pretender, taking to Twitter to shoot down ITV’s claims that its viewing figures showed a Bradby bounce.

Now, the most grizzled of all the news beasts has entered the fray. Jon Snow, who has hosted Channel 4’s flagship bulletin for a quarter of a century, has a message for the pair. “Nobody gives a tinker’s cuss how many viewers anybody has,” he booms. “The question is, are they any good?”

The 68-year-old, who says he does not watch a 10pm bulletin, has been coaxed out of the studio and onto the sofas in the corner of the Channel 4 News office, to speak to The Telegraph. We are here, nominally, to talk about the fact that he is stepping down after 35 years from his role as chairman of the New Horizon Youth Centre, a London charity that helps around 3,000 young, homeless people a year. But after five minutes of that, we are into the real purpose of our conversation.

On Wednesday, David Cameron announced that the government would consider plans to privatise Channel 4. It is a proposal that many in the television industry think would destroy the mischief-making remit of the broadcaster, which is state-owned, but receives not a penny from the public purse, and reinvests its profits in programming. As the channel’s elder statesman, Snow is ideally placed to make the case.

“I think privatization would be a mistake,” he says. “We cost the public nothing, the amount of money that could be realized is frankly not that much, and in realizing it there is a very serious danger that what is special about Channel 4 will be lost. You tell me of any other entity that can generate £900 million of revenues a year, without costing the taxpayer a bean. We even pay our taxes. We’re putting in as well! We’re not taking out! There’s no way that you can say that Channel 4 is any kind of drag on the economy. It’s a pretty sublime deal.”

Channel 4 was launched by the Thatcher government, in 1982, as an engine of innovation and an outlet for alternative viewpoints. In an industry in which the former Prime Minister is not particularly popular, Snow caused an audience of television luminaries to draw breath earlier this year, when he praised the Iron Lady while picking up a Bafta fellowship. Lady Thatcher, he says, would not want Channel 4 to be sold.

“When I received my Bafta, I set out a number of people to be grateful to,” he recounts.” I mentioned my family, and then I mentioned Margaret Thatcher, and there was an audible gasp. I said, ‘Let’s not forget, Mrs Thatcher gave birth to Channel 4.’ Well with Willie [Whitelaw, her Home Secretary], but you need a Willie to give birth, as she pointed out.

“We are the product of Maggie and Willie. And I think she would not want us wound up, or indeed changed. I think what she conceived was right. She felt clearly that the texture of British broadcasting needed a kick in the pants, and if Channel 4 gives life a bit of a kick in the pants, that’s what it’s for.”

David Abraham, Channel 4’s chief executive, has suggested that a privatised broadcaster would need to redirect £200 million a year out of its programming budget, and into shareholder dividends. The risk, says Snow, is that Channel 4 News would be a casualty of the cuts. “They would not be able to run to the costs of doing what we do,” he says. “I don’t think a commercial entity could afford a one hour news bulletin, which doesn’t exist in any other English speaking country on earth.”

While the presenter refuses to say that the Conservative proposals are ideologically motivated, there are plenty on the Tory right who see Channel 4 as a bastion of leftism and its news as biased. Some are relishing the chance to neuter it. Snow rejects the charge of left-wing bias. “If you read the remit, we are actually charged with being different from what other bulletins are showing,” he says.

“If you look at BBC One, ITV and Sky, I bet you on quite a few days out of 365 you’ll find them running exactly the same stories in exactly the same order. You won’t find that with us. There are a whole plethora of ways in which what we offer is different, fundamentally. Some people say I think that must be left wing, because we never see anything left wing otherwise. Well if that’s what they think, that’s what they think. But I don’t think we are particularly left wing, what we are is particularly deep.”

There is a hint that, despite having a reputation as an incorrigible leftie, Snow was not disastrously disappointed with the previous, coalition government, and he says that he has many friends on the right. “If you look in my inbox today you’ll see me being invited by a prominent Tory MP to come and address a Tory gig, just before Christmas. I enjoy very warm relations with a very large number of Conservatives.”

Curled up on the sofa, the presenter is sporting a particularly lurid lime green combination of socks and tie. What he is not wearing, as many will have noticed, is a poppy. Aeons ago he coined the term “poppy fascism”, to reflect the suffocating social pressure to sport the paper flower on-air.

“They died so that we might be free to decide whether to wear one or not,” he repeats, wearily. “It so happens that I choose to wear a poppy on Remembrance Sunday, as I always have done, and if you come with me to church on Sunday, you’ll find me with my poppy on. My dad was a bishop. The idea that we strutted around for weeks beforehand wearing a poppy. He’d think we were bonkers.”

Snow has been at ITN, the company that provides ITV and Channel 4 with news, for four decades. He has had the chance to work for the BBC, but rejected an approach from Lord Hall when the corporation’s director-general was known as plain old Tony, and in charge of BBC news, in the 1990s.

He is nevertheless passionate about the BBC, and rejects calls by Bradby for the corporation to slim down its news operation, describing the ITV host’s claim that the BBC is squeezing out rivals as “complete nonsense”. “I don’t think that people are being squeezed because the BBC is so big,” he exclaims. “Listen, the way not to be squeezed is by being excellent, so you have to strive for excellence, which is what they [ITV] are trying every day. They’ll just have to do it a bit harder.”

Despite being two years away from his 70th birthday, he is adamant that he too will keep on striving, and has no plans to retire. “A third of the people living in this country are either a lot older than me or about the same age,” he says. “I am their representative on earth, and thrilled to be so. I have no aches and pains, I ride a bicycle and I have a trainer twice a week. The thought has never come across my mind. Each day brings new challenges. That’s why Channel 4 is so exciting, and why I don't want to see it tinkered with.”