Ian Katz

Wake up to an item on Radio 4’s Today about the shortage of HRT drugs. Women are resorting to trading them illegally in car parks. The Govern­ment has had to appoint an “HRT tsar”. A pharmaceutical executive explains it is partly to do with supply chain problems but mostly the result of a surge in demand triggered by a Channel 4 documentary presented by Davina McCall last year. 

Now Davina has made a follow-up film and people are worried that even more women will have the temerity to ask for treatment. 

Like every broadcaster, Channel 4 is feeling the heat from the streaming giants. But, at an RTS early-evening event, the network’s director of programmes stated that, despite their bigger budgets, he can offer producers the personal touch that Netflix et al lack.

Ian Katz said: “If you ask drama producers what is it like dealing with the streamers, they tend to say two things. On the plus side, you get quick answers and big budgets; on the negative side, they swallow up all your rights and you have a five-minute window.…

Katz, a former Newsnight editor and deputy editor of the Guardian, said that as a journalist he’d spent many years attempting to get climate change “into the heart of the political and the media agenda and mostly failing.”

But overnight Channel 4’s debate ensured that the subject came under the spotlight during the election. “I’m very proud of that,” he said. “It was an extraordinary achievement.”

Katz, speaking at an RTS Early Evening Event, described Channel 4 News as “probably the highest quality news programme in the world.”

Surprise hit of the week is 100 Vaginas, in which the artist Laura Dods­worth photographs the genitalia of 100 women and then talks to them about the images and how they feel about their bodies. It’s a great film – bold and political and warm – but firmly at the art-house end of the channel’s output. Everyone is delighted when it attracts an audience of more than 1 million.

The new shows are part of a deliberate drive by the channel to offer distinctive content, in a bid to beat competition from streaming services and other broadcasters.

At the launch of the new slate, Ian Katz, the channel’s Director of Programming, said he wants to focus on “entertaining, mischievous and innovative shows about the big issues and arguments in Britain today.”

He added: “Many of the shows [launching in 2019] are not ones that the global digital giants, even as they plough billions into new content, would be remotely interested in making.”

Take three very different commissioners, all united by a common purpose: securing and showing content that satisfies their audiences. But achieving that simple aim is rarely straightforward in an increasingly complex media environment.

First things first. Picking up from Tony Hall’s impassioned plea that policy makers act to protect the BBC, session chair Kirsty Wark asked Georgia Brown and Zai Bennett – from Amazon Studios and Sky, respectively – whether public service broadcasting was still necessary in these content­rich times.

The announcement comes amid a slew of new commissions and announcements from the broadcaster, as Chief Executive Alex Mahon and Director of Programming Ian Katz, addressed Channel 4 staff about the future of the channel.

Katz revealed a five-point plan which, he believes, will secure the broadcaster against threats posed by competitors, and will ensure that Channel 4 retains its crown as the youngest-skewing public service channel in the world.

Among those aims was a renewed focus on comedy for the channel and its on-demand platform All4.

Getting information out of politicians on TV is proving difficult this election. Day after day of interviews on a range of programmes are testing parliamentary hopefuls on every policy they have, and straight answers are rare. 

Television becomes the perfect climate for politicians to avoid tough questioning and instead get their planned party message across. 

Emailing me directions to his flat in Earls Court, Newsnight’s Lead Presenter, Evan Davis, mentions the "fascinating cluster" of estate agents where he lives. "Fascinating" and "estate agents" appear infrequently in the same sentence, but this is classic Evan Davis.