How Channel 4 is Innovating the Traditional TV Model in the UK | Connections Ep 13 | Salesforce

The big switch I made was to think about the new competition, Netflix, etc. And to think about how did we hold up our share and grow against them. And that required a massive transformation of the organization.

Hey, I'm Sarah Franklin and welcome to Connections, where we hear from some of the most innovative leaders in marketing. Today we're talking about innovation in the broadcast space with Alex Mahan, the CEO. CEO of Channel 4, which had over 1 billion views on their streaming platform last year. No woman has ever run a larger channel in the uk, so I came all the way to London to find out how she does it. So, Alex, thank you for joining us here on Connections today.

Delighted to be here.

Let's start at the beginning. Do you think that you're the only TV executive that is a trained rocket scientist?

Well, I think so, but maybe when people watch this, some others will come out of the woodwork.

I was a chemical engineering major and you were a physicist.

I didn't know you were chemical engineering. Yeah, I was a physicist for seven years. I did a degree and then I did a PhD in physics.

So what was that like?

Well, as it turns out, not as much fun as being in the creative industries. So I did physics for a long time and I really enjoyed it. First I was a rocket scientist and then I went on to be a medical physicist. So I worked in a hospital with patients and I really, really enjoyed it. But in the end I thought science is about narrowing and narrowing on a smaller area. And, you know, business and running companies is about learning lots of things and then how you piece them together. And I realized I preferred learning lots of new things and studying new things and thinking about how they got put together. So I left science and went into business.

So what brought you into media?

Well, when I was growing up, all I did was watch television. So after school I just watched television. My mum was out of work and I never went outside. I didn't do any sports, I just watched television. And when I found out that you could have a job doing that where that was genuinely advantageous, like, sign me.

Up for that one.

Yeah, I was like, why would you ever want to do anything else? So I got into the creative industries first. I was in the Internet. From that I went into the media and the creative industries and digital and tech and I thought this is the place to be because, you know, the metier the study of it is so interesting and it's fun.

I imagine when you were a physicist doing rocket science work, you had to try things out, experiment. How does that Work in creative. What do you learn when you fail?

Well, that's a good question. First of all, I think you always be alert to evidence. Like in all business, you should be like that. But particularly in creative business, you have to be listening. You have to be alert to what the audience think and what consumers think and how things land. But the process of business is really, really different. In science, you're always discounting possibilities. In creative businesses, actually, you're planting many seeds and you're keeping lots of things alive for as long as possible because you don't know how they'll turn out. And that's a really, really different way of operating.

Yeah, like letting a thousand flowers bloom and see how it goes.

Ultimately, the ideas come from in their heads. When you're coming up with ideas, you need some freedom and some trust and people who've got faith in you to come up with it and to give you a chance. And that's really different to science, which is like knocking things down. Facts. That's not going to work. So there are really different ways of managing.

Tell us about the mission of Channel 4.

Well, it's a really peculiar organization. So it's owned by the public. It doesn't have any shareholders, doesn't have to return a profit. But equally, it's there to serve the public and to do new things. But it doesn't receive any money from the government. We receive all our money from advertising. Turns over about a billion. But it was set up to appeal to audiences that others don't reach, to serve the underserved, to represent the underrepresented. It's also been set up to challenge power and hold them to account and represent opinions, which often gets us into trouble, and is set up to do creative innovation. So we do lots of new things. We're particularly famous for all our LGBT programming. Overtime to all of our programming that's for people of color, for overtime. So we do lots of things that are representing audiences that others don't, but they're also challenging prejudice. So, for example, we're the biggest broadcaster in the world for the Paralympics, and that has changed the face and the perception of disability in this country. It's a huge amount of fun because it's an organization that genuinely has a mission.

In 2017, though, it wasn't doing as well when you took over as CEO. Tell us about how you brought in change to the organization.

Well, all television channels are challenged. Right? Because the truth is, we're all, as consumers, watching loads of video. The challenge there is, how do you Compete with the new competition because most people go to bed 10 o' clock at night, watch Netflix on a device while not talking to their partner. And you know, that's a joy in many ways, but that's the challenge. So when I came in, the truth is I think we were thinking about the old competition, the other networks, and that's like maintaining your slice of the pie whilst the pie is getting smaller. So the big switch I made was to think about the new competition, Netflix, et cetera, and to think about how did we hold up our share and grow against them. And that required a massive transformation of the organization.

You went all big on streaming. Tell us about that transformation.

So we focused on a few big things, right? First of all is accept that your linear business is dying, the old business is dying and stop trying to hold on to it. Grow as fast as you can in the new business. That means you have to change your programming to be for young people because they're predominantly on streaming. It means you need to change how you release your programming. It means that you have to change how you market what I would say is fishing where the fish are. So we had to switch to marketing on Snap, marketing on TikTok. But it meant a kind of wholehearted change across all departments of the business because it's also about where we chose to invest our money.

And you took a chance on different types of programming as well. Tell me about It's a Sin. Everybody else passed it up and you took it on.

We did this amazing series called It's a Sin with Russell T. Davis, a fantastic writer, which was about, you know, the dreadful reality and shame of the AIDS pandemic in the 80s. Everyone rejected it. They felt it wouldn't be popular. We made this incredible four part series which is joyous as well as shocking and is about the reality of coming out and coming to a big city to have to do that. But also the hideousness of how the government and others avoided and ignored the illness. And it was a huge success and it was scary to do because I thought even the night before it went out, is anyone in this pandemic going to watch something about another one? But that's an example of where we do things and they challenge perceptions and they're fun and entertaining, even though they're poignant. And in that case it's really important because it doubled the rates of HIV testing in this country.

That's incredible. And then during COVID you made other pivots as well that made impacts. How did you pivot your programming? Strategy. During the COVID lockdown, we did some.

Crazy things during COVID We had to cut a lot of money. And of course we had the reality that everyone was trapped at home so they wanted to watch television, but we had no revenue because no advertisers wanted to advertise. And we were all scattered, working from home. So we had this peculiar high demand, low supply, no revenue, which isn't, as.

A business person, where you want to.

Be whilst trapped at home with four children who required homeschooling. The switch we made was to think, well, how does the audience feel right now? So as well as cutting money, we reinvested money into super fast turnaround programming. We were all forced to have to cook every night. So we had a show every night where a famous chef here, Jamie Oliver, was cooking, and he was cooking day by day without crew. In the end, he was filming himself on his iPhone. But it was super popular because it was the reality of what we were all stuck with. We did a house show where we put GoPros on dogs and they ran around the house. The dogs ran around the house. So we did lots of things not.

Shot on iPhone, filmed by dogs, Filmed.

By dogs with GoPros. But we did things that reflected how we felt as a nation. We also did a campaign which was the government and the public need you to stay at home sitting on the sofa, watching television. That's how you can save people. That's what we need you to do. But that switch to becoming more current made us more salient and actually made us more popular. So we grew audience share having been in decline for years. And last year our streaming business grew at 30%. I mean, that's crazy levels of growth. So the reflecting of your audience, they'll have a connection, really positive business effect. Wow.

When you think of these shows with these big topics that hit 50% of the population, how important is it to market those shows to get them out to your audience?

Hugely. Hugely. Part of the breaking down of Taboos is even people being aware of those programs. Sometimes you don't even need people to watch the programs. They need to be aware that they exist and that they can vocalize topics and that they can challenge and they can ask things. So a few weeks ago, we had a whole day on the channel where every program was fronted by black talent and all the crews were black. So that's changing problems in our industry where people say, hmm, I'd like to do that. But those people, they're just not available. They don't exist. So now it's really clear that it's a choice.

We just launched our streaming service, Salesforce Plus. I was wondering if you had advice for us.

Well, I'm always happy to give advice. Whether it's good is another matter. I'm sure it's great. Look, the biggest thing with any service is to be ready to change. Listen to your consumers. See what happens. Think about them as distinct groups. What do they need? How often do they need it? And do they want things that are of the day or of the week or of the quarter? You know, I think that's probably the key things to think about there and then, you know, see how it goes. Be ready to change.

I think change is hard in an organization. How do you make change happen?

Well, I think change is hard, but it's also making people realize that change can be a good thing. It's about rejuvenation. It's about freshness. It's about new ideas. It's about growth. And of course, the opposite of change is atrophy. Nobody wants the smart. Nobody wants atrophy, do they? So it's about explaining that. And it's not something to be feared. It's something to be celebrated and learned from.

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