Channel 4
(C4) is to revamp its IT skills development strategy in light of the
convergence of TV and web services and the rise of commodity IT outsourcing. The
broadcaster will also introduce formal succession planning next year as a means
of retaining the right staff.
C4’s chief information officer (CIO), Kevin Gallagher, told Computing that the broadcaster’s 60-strong IT team is small enough to allow considerable movement between departments and that this was a way of maximising staff skills.
“As we move to a more converged world, we expect people to move across departments instead of them just being a broadcaster or working in IT,” he said. “For example, we want to use people with traditional commissioning or TV backgrounds to commission web material. It is a different world, but some of the skills and creativity are similar and we want to harness that.”
C4 IT staff largely work on business-critical projects, while commodity IT is outsourced to partners such as Computacenter and Indian supplier NIIT. This means staff often work across business lines and are involved in shaping and managing third-party agreements and business processes, such as those underpinning the station’s recent contract with YouTube (see below).
Having a small team helps when it comes to competency mapping for IT, and the formal succession planning to be introduced next year should help the broadcaster retain its top staff.
“In a lot of flat organisations, people tend to move, but we are keen to retain the right people, see them moving around the organisation and have them become general managers rather than subject-matter experts,” said Gallagher.
Despite the current lack of a structured development programme, C4 has maintained its technical training budget – about £1,000 per employee – even in a challenging economic climate.
The broadcaster has reinstated its IT graduate programme after suspending it for financial reasons for a few years, and has just recruited a computer science graduate into a senior position. “What we can promise [the graduate] is that he will have a lot of business contact. Many systems don’t have a huge number of users, so the interaction between them and the developers is quite close,” said Gallagher.
YouTube deal puts IT centre stage
Under a deal signed with YouTube last month, C4 will make full-length content available through the video sharing web site shortly after shows have aired on TV from 2010.
The move is part of the channel’s strategy to work with third parties to get its content out to as wide an audience as possible, said C4 chief information officer Kevin Gallagher.
“This deal means there is a lot of work in IT to support the business development team in any technical issues that may appear and ensure we deliver from a contractual point of view,” he said.
IT work behind the scenes of the C4/YouTube deal includes the provision of metadata in XML format to YouTube for each show, which includes information on synopsis, cast and breaks for insertion of advertising.
Workflows co-ordinated by IT also include the re-formatting of video content for the web.
“Adding a new platform gets easier each time. And we now have a good suite of systems that lets us add new channels quickly,” said Gallagher.
Online projects planned for next year will see further alignment of web sites around programmes, and more use of social networking.
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