Failure to investigate Brand complaint was ‘horrendous’ – Channel 4 boss

By Charlotte McLaughlin, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

The boss of Channel 4 has said the failure to adequately investigate a complaint about Russell Brand was “horrendous”.

The broadcaster’s outgoing chairman, Sir Ian Cheshire, and chief executive Alex Mahon appeared in front of the UK Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday.

Last year, she apologised to a former staff member for not investigating a “serious” allegation made against Brand in 2009.

A review by Channel 4 found “no evidence” that staff knew about the accusations made by four women prior to the airing of a 2023 Dispatches documentary.

Comedian and actor Brand, 49, has denied all the allegations, and stressed his relationships were all consensual.

Ms Mahon was grilled by MPs about whether the broadcaster’s response was adequate, and said: “Obviously, all the management has changed at Channel 4 since that occasion but it was absolutely wrong that that complaint was not dealt with adequately at the time.

“And most horrendous for the individual that it was kind of referred up the chain but didn’t go further.

“And I’ve been very clear on the record that that was not the appropriate way to deal with it.”

She defended the decision to have Brand on a 2019 episode of Channel 4’s The Great Celebrity Bake Off: Stand Up To Cancer, saying that there was “not a set of public allegations on the record, and it was very difficult for the women that did have allegations to be listened to”.

Ms Mahon said that all productions have a whistleblowing call line for Channel 4, which gets “a small number of complaints every year, and they are fully investigated”.

She also said: “None of us want bad behaviour across the industry, and we need multiple mechanisms in place to ensure that when it occurs, if it occurs, it is caught or can be reported very easily, with no risk to the individuals involved.

“Because what we definitely saw in the Brand case, and we have seen in other cases, that the risk to individuals is very high, and so the fear of reporting is very, very high.”

Elsewhere, she disclosed that revenues at Channel 4 were up 1% last year, and “pretty much on a flat deficit (for 2024) so that’s positive”.

Sir Ian warned there are issues in how easy it is to get viewers to watch traditional broadcasters through current platforms.

He said: “The key element of what we’ve seen in the regulatory process is the issue of prominence, which I would thoroughly endorse, because without prominence we will disappear into the 500th page of an electronic programme guide that no one watches.”

Sir Ian added that “it’s mostly there in the smart-connected TVs, not all”, but not on other places that people watch content.

He said Channel 4 should not be “naive” about how advertising revenue is “threatened by some of those ad models” by other services “because they do not necessarily want to give us the money that we need to create those programmes”.

Sir Ian added that the “challenge” will “continue to evolve in a world where we’re being scraped by AI, and we are seeing new models emerge”.

Ms Mahon also said the cost of making high-end drama has “gone up about 50% over the last five years” because of inflation, the Hollywood actors’ strike, the rise of streamers, and less co-production funding.

She said it was “well worth looking” at Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky’s push to make 5% of streaming income part of a UK cultural fund that would finance high-end British drama.

Ms Mahon appeared as the hit Netflix drama Adolescence, exploring misogyny, sparked national and political conversations about teenagers’ use of social media.

She said that platforms that rank content through algorithms are “publishers”, and their impact “on our society in the UK” needs to be looked at.

She said Channel 4 published a study earlier this year which found the way technology works means content that is “more salacious or more dyspeptic or more noisy, moves faster” is more successful on social media.

Ms Mahon said “the most worrying thing is because individuals watch much of that content alone… your opinions tend to become more radical over time, because you’re not discussing them with anyone”.

She added that the effect is “what’s happening to young boys, and at the worst case, what’s happening with real radicalisation”.

When asked about regulation, Ms Mahon said it was a question for media regulator Ofcom.

She was also asked about the impact of stopping adverts for less healthy food or drink on television between 5.30am and 9.00pm from October 2025.

Ms Mahon said the estimated advertising revenue loss is in the “£40 to 50 million range in the worst end of it”.

She argued that the move “will not make much difference to children” because “they’re not really watching linear television”.

She added that if the ban includes “brand spend”, which involves the brand and not the product, this would be “massively problematic to us”.