The BBC wants Channel 4’s programmes inside iPlayer – and its new director general has confirmed the two are already talking about it. Is BritBox on its way back?
Matt Brittin, who took charge of the BBC just six and a half weeks ago after a long career at Google, made the admission while giving evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday, as part of the ongoing BBC Royal Charter Review – the once-a-decade process that sets out what the BBC is for and how it is funded. Sitting beside BBC chairman Samir Shah, he covered a lot of ground.
Channel 4 was the standout. Brittin confirmed that the BBC has already approached it about a shared streaming future, with Channel 4’s programmes potentially sitting inside iPlayer.
He talked about building what he called a “sovereign streaming platform” for the UK – a single British home for British television, big enough to stand up to the American giants. It is an idea with a long and slightly cursed history.
He was also asked about the future of Freeview, and the government’s plan to eventually switch off the aerial-delivered service in favour of internet-delivered TV. He welcomed the recent Green Paper on that, though he was careful not to commit to very much.
Let’s start with the big one.
The dream of a British Netflix – and why it keeps failing
The idea Brittin is reaching for is not new. For years, the British broadcasters have circled the same question: how do a handful of relatively small UK channels compete with Netflix, Amazon, Disney and YouTube, all of which are vastly bigger and none of which are British?
The answer people keep landing on is scale through cooperation – pool the programmes, build one destination big enough to matter, and keep British audiences watching British television.
And twice now, the broadcasters have tried exactly that and failed.
The first attempt was Project Kangaroo, a joint on-demand venture between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. It was blocked by the Competition Commission in 2009, on competition grounds, before it ever launched.
The second was BritBox, the BBC and ITV subscription service that arrived in the UK in 2019. It was eventually folded into ITVX Premium, and its standalone app was switched off in April 2024.
So when the BBC revived the idea in March, in its Charter Review submission A BBC For All, it was treading familiar ground. That document floated opening up iPlayer to ITV, Channel 4 and 5 – each broadcaster keeping its own business model, all under one roof.
The argument was about survival: only a few streaming destinations will keep the scale that matters, and there is a real danger that none of the ones left standing are British-owned.
Then, at the start of this month, everything shifted.
The Sky-ITV deal that reshuffled the board
At the beginning of July, Sky’s American parent company Comcast agreed to buy ITV’s broadcasting arm – the ITV channels, the ITVX streaming service and UTV – for up to £1.6 billion, with the deal expected to complete in the second half of 2027.
Sky, in other words, is absorbing the commercial half of ITV, and one of the three broadcasters the BBC hoped to gather under one umbrella is now heading into American ownership. We wrote about what that means for viewers earlier this week.
That is the backdrop against which Brittin was speaking – and it changes the maths considerably.
What the director general actually said
With all that in mind, here is what Brittin told the committee.
“We have had an approach and a discussion with Channel 4,” he confirmed. The shape he described is straightforward: Channel 4 programmes sitting inside iPlayer, in partnership with the BBC, while Channel 4 carries on being funded by advertising rather than the licence fee.
It is not a merger or a takeover – it is Channel 4’s shows appearing on the BBC’s platform, with Channel 4 keeping its advertising model and the BBC providing the reach. He said the two sides would explore it “as quickly as we are able to”.
He was also unusually blunt about why Channel 4 might want this now. “In the world of this ITV-Sky merger, Channel 4 looks very subscale,” he said. He used the word “subscale” twice.
Saying that about a fellow public service broadcaster, out loud, to a room full of MPs, is not especially diplomatic – and it tells you a lot about the position Channel 4 would be negotiating from.
How the vision has narrowed
Line the pieces up and the picture is clear. In March, the BBC imagined a four-way British platform: itself, ITV, Channel 4 and 5. Since then, ITV has been bought by Sky and Comcast. Channel 5 has been owned by American giant Paramount for years.
That leaves the BBC and Channel 4 as the only two wholly British public service broadcasters still standing on their own – which is precisely why the BBC-and-Channel 4 conversation is the one that survives.
Put bluntly, we may be watching British television split into two camps. On one side, two British-owned players – the BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4.
On the other, Channel 5, already American-owned, and ITV on its way there, plus the full weight of Netflix, Amazon, Disney and YouTube behind them.
Brittin made the scale point himself: iPlayer, he admitted, “will never be able to rival the scale of YouTube”.
The bigger vision he kept returning to was what he called “a sovereign streaming platform in the UK – I use that word carefully”, built on iPlayer’s existing reach, which he described as unmatched anywhere in the world.
When committee member Natasha Irons – who mentioned that she used to work at Channel 4 and in its streaming operation – raised the ghost of Kangaroo and asked whether the BBC could be the flagbearer to finally unite the public service broadcasters, Brittin replied simply: “I hope that we could.”
He blamed the regulator for killing Kangaroo, accusing it of “looking in the rear-view mirror”.
Not quite BritBox, though
It is tempting to file this under “BritBox returns”, but that is not quite right. BritBox was a paid subscription archive of old shows.
What is being discussed here is closer to Channel 4’s current, free, ad-funded programming living inside iPlayer. Different plumbing, same underlying goal – keep British viewers on a British platform.
And the plumbing is not hypothetical. As we reported in January, Channel 4’s streaming service already carries content from U, the free service owned by the BBC’s commercial arm UKTV.
Shows like Red Dwarf turned up on Channel 4 streaming at the start of the year. The two organisations have already proven they can share programmes across their apps – doing it the other way round, with Channel 4 content on iPlayer, is a smaller leap than it might first sound.
What Brittin did not answer
For all the candour, plenty is still missing. Brittin gave no detail on who would own or control such a platform, how it would be branded, whether Channel 4’s own streaming app would survive alongside it, how the money would be split, or any timeline beyond “as quickly as we are able to”.
This is a stated intention and a confirmed conversation, not a signed deal – and given how the last two attempts ended, that distinction is worth holding on to.
Freeview, 2034 and the Green Paper
The other big question hanging over British television is Freeview – the free, aerial-based service that millions of homes still rely on – and when it eventually gets switched off in favour of internet-delivered TV.
For anyone catching up, the government’s recent media Green Paper set out two possible dates for that switchover: a preferred 2034, or a later 2044, with a public consultation running until the end of August.
The long-term plan is to move free television onto broadband, freeing up the airwaves for mobile networks to buy.
Brittin welcomed the Green Paper and said he had spoken to Ofcom about it personally.
His main concern was the homes yet to make the jump: “Whatever the date of switchover, we need to have a solution for those who have yet to switch,” he said, framing it as something industry and programme-makers would need to solve together.
He also made the BBC’s own financial interest plain. Switching off the old transmission network would let the corporation cut “a significant amount of cost that is spent on basically old infrastructure” and redirect that money into programmes, journalism and technology.
“This movie has played out in the past with DTT,” he added. “We need to get on with the planning now.”
What he pointedly did not do was pick a side between 2034 and 2044, or say much about how the remaining Freeview-only homes get carried across.
On the switchover, then, the new director general is engaged but not yet committing – which, six and a half weeks into the job, is probably about where you would expect him to be.
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Take the lot BBC, it won’t make a blind bit of difference.