Channel 4 folds comedy into drama, and 340 jobs go with it

The brief is still up, and it still wants 2028

The Channel 4 comedy brief has sat on the broadcaster’s 4Producers site for months. It asks for “6×30 minute fully scripted returning shows”. The instruction to producers is plain: “Send us 1 or 2 ideas that you are passionate about and that are a good fit for Channel 4 specifically.” It also says “We’re actively developing and commissioning for 2028 and beyond.” That page was live this week. On 9 September, Channel 4 announced proposals to cut around 340 roles, 28% of its workforce, by the end of the year.

Deadline reported that roughly half of all commissioning roles are at risk, while noting that the exact impact on the drama and comedy teams isn’t yet known. The same reporting says Channel 4 will create a new scripted commissioning team. Sources said it would “more closely resemble the set-up at major U.S. networks and streamers”. The new unit covers shows including Derry Girls, Big Boys and A Woman of Substance. Comedy is overseen by Charlie Perkins; drama commissioning is led by interim chief Gwawr Lloyd after Ollie Madden left for Netflix.

The brief names six people. Perkins is Head of Comedy, Andy Brereton is Senior Commissioning Editor and Northern Ireland Lead, and Joe Hullait is Commissioning Executive covering Scotland and Wales on maternity cover. Serena Basra is Development Executive and Chloe Pearson is Genre Assistant and Coordinator. Each has a channel4.co.uk address printed beside their name. Laura Riseam, Commissioning Editor and Wales Lead, is listed as on maternity leave with no address. None of those people has been named as at risk, and nothing published says they are. That’s five live inboxes for every sitcom writer in the country, which explains why the brief asks so politely for one or two ideas.

Is Channel 4 comedy still taking pitches?

Yes. As of this week the comedy brief and the 4ideas portal are both live, and no closure has been announced. The stated submission route is unchanged. Your idea needs the backing of a PACT-registered production company, materials go up through 4ideas, and the team asks for a treatment alongside any script. The brief also says not to resubmit rejected projects. That line reads differently when you know the person who rejected it may be in a consultation process.

The categories are worth knowing before you spend three weeks on the wrong document. The brief splits Channel 4 comedy into Broad, Authored, Alternative and Semi-Scripted, plus current and fast-turnaround ideas. At the broad end it wants “character-driven, returnable sitcom ideas”. Channel 4 is developing for 2028 and beyond, so anything you finish this month is aiming at a slot three Christmases away.

Here is the practical read for a writer with a half-hour and a producer attached. The window between now and the end of formal consultation is a strange one to be sending into. The people currently listed are the people to send to, because they are the people Channel 4 says to send to. But the brief’s instruction to focus on one or two ideas rather than firing off six has never mattered more. A merged scripted department with fewer commissioners will read a thinner slice of everything that arrives, and the treatment they ask for alongside the script is probably the only page anyone reads twice.

£640m of content, and fewer people choosing it

Channel 4’s stated purpose in all of this is to direct a greater proportion of revenues towards distinctive British content by cutting non-programming spend. Priya Dogra, the chief executive, said in the announcement that “Channel 4 is a precious asset which plays a unique role in the UK”. She framed the proposals as building a simpler, more focused and more sustainable Channel 4, with fewer management layers and less duplication. Formal consultation with affected employees follows in due course.

For context on the money, rather than as any kind of forward promise: Channel 4 invested £640m in content in 2025, equal to 62% of revenues, on total revenue of £1.03bn. Digital advertising revenue was up 13% to £346m, against a £10m pre-tax deficit for the year. Those are historic numbers published before this restructure. With 62p in every pound of revenue already going out as content spend, most of the remaining cost base is people.

The press release doesn’t address what commissioning actually is, which is the mechanism by which a script gets read, and a different sort of cost to a duplicated finance function. Halving the number of people doing it doesn’t halve the number of scripts arriving, it halves the number of chances any given one gets looked at by someone whose taste happens to fit it. Bectu’s head Philippa Childs, quoted by C21Media on 9 September, put the industry-wide version of it:

These job cuts are a further blow to the UK TV industry that is struggling in the face of an increasingly competitive environment and significant reductions in advertising revenue.

Childs also noted the BBC is expected to reduce around 2,000 roles. That’s a separate story, with its own consultation and its own set of very worried people in Salford, and the same shrinking ad market sitting underneath it.

Where else a half-hour script can go this autumn

Radio 4 remains the least glamorous and most reliably open door in British comedy. It has just commissioned 19 stand-ups and five pilots, a larger number of green lights than most people assume exists anywhere. The BBC’s funded routes for newer writers are running too, including the 10 comedy bursaries worth £15,000 handed out in August. Neither is a substitute for a Channel 4 comedy commission, and neither pretends to be.

Channel 4 has also run targeted schemes of its own outside the main brief. The 4Skills and Northern Ireland Screen comedy lab, announced on 20 February 2025, funded half-hour comedy scripts pitched as one-to-two-page treatments. Production companies could submit up to three ideas, and selected scripts were commissioned in May. Perkins said at the time the channel was “thrilled to be partnering with 4Skills and Northern Ireland Screen on our second Comedy Lab development scheme”. Whether a third one exists on the other side of this restructure is exactly the sort of thing that goes quiet during a consultation. Then it either reappears or it doesn’t.

And then there’s the route that doesn’t need a commissioner at all, which more performers are taking on purpose rather than as a consolation. We’ve written about comics self-funding their own specials and about the podcast operation filling the gap Live at the Apollo left. A scripted sitcom is a harder thing to self-finance than an hour of stand-up filmed in a basement club, obviously. Nobody is crowdfunding six half-hours with a location manager, a script editor and a dog on the call sheet.

The thing I keep coming back to is that comedy brief page. It’s still there, still listing six names and five working email addresses. It still asks for one or two ideas you’re passionate about, and still points at 2028. At some point in the next few months somebody will open that page in a CMS and start deleting rows.

Sources

• Channel 4 press release: transformation strategy, 9 September 2026
• Channel 4 4Producers comedy brief
• Deadline: Channel 4 To Combine Drama & Comedy Teams Under Historic Jobs Cull
• C21Media: Bectu on the 340 job cuts
• Channel 4 Annual Report 2025
• Channel 4: 4Skills and Northern Ireland Screen comedy script writing initiative