Tory ’revenge’ against Channel 4 could turn into bruising battle

theguardian.com:

According to one key individual involved in the battle for Channel 4’s future, the broadcaster is a “wonderful company doing a fantastic job”, it is performing well financially and plays a crucial role in supporting the British television ecosystem.

Curiously, that individual is Stephen Parkinson, a government minister arguing that the only solution to secure Channel 4’s future is to rapidly privatise it and sell it off to a commercial owner, possibly one based overseas.

One of the more confusing aspects of the decision to push ahead with the privatisation of Channel 4 is trying to understand the motive. Multiple governments have considered and then rejected the idea over the last three decades. The latest attempt was a pet project of the former culture minister John Whittingdale, and was seen as having taken a hit when he lost his job in last autumn’s reshuffle.

A public consultation was launched last summer and its 60,000 responses – still unpublished but assumed to be largely anti-privatisation – led to rumblings among civil servants that ministers would ultimately drop the plans rather than face a bruising parliamentary battle.

Which leaves onlookers asking the question: why does the government care so much about privatising Channel 4?

One explanation – offered by the Conservative MP Julian Knight, the chair of the House of Commons culture select committee – is that the proposal is revenge for supposed anti-Tory and anti-Brexit bias in its output over recent years. “Undoubtedly, across much of the party there is a feeling of payback time and the word privatisation tickles the ivories of many,” Knight said.

Yet while Conservative MPs complain regularly about the BBC, their comments about Channel 4 are less frequent. They