18/11/2002 - Former Channel 4's CEO, Michael Jackson, criticizes the decision taken by his successor, Mark Thompson

In an interview today with ‘The Guardian’ newspaper, Michael Jackson who left his post as CEO of Channel 4 last year to take the reigns of Universal TV’s US division, says that contrary to his successor Mark Thompson, he would not have taken the decision to close down Film Four.
“It is a mistake to send a signal that Channel 4 is out of film production” he said. Defending the theory advanced by C4’s new leadership that the digital channels E4 and Film Four were diverting cash and imagination from the main channel, Jackson insists that E4 Entertainment and the collection of Film Four movie channels were still performing ahead of their original business plan. For him, Channel 4 –which lost Pounds 28m last year- is not in crisis but in a short-term “bubble” and the people at C4 “should be confident because the channel has an excellent reputation and its ratings for the end of 2002 will be slightly ahead of 2001”.
Jackson who supervised the channel’s expansion into digital TV to prepare for the UK government’s plan to switch off analogue channels, insists that he left C4 in shape for the future. “When you develop new things, you lose money in the short term. It’s called investment, actually”…