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Alex Mahon has stepped down as chief executive of Channel 4 after almost eight years, sparking a search for a new boss of the UK public sector broadcaster at the same time as it is seeking a chair.
Mahon has been at the channel since 2017 — joining as its first female chief executive — and will leave in the summer. She has lined up a new role, though Channel 4 declined to comment on where Mahon was going next.
Her departure comes after Channel 4 cut jobs and costs last year in the wake of the worst slump in advertising revenues since the financial crisis of 2008-09.
The broadcaster is also seeking a permanent chair, after outgoing chair Sir Ian Cheshire announced last year he would also stand down. A search is being run by headhunters Russell Reynolds, and the appointment will be overseen by Ofcom, the media regulator, but signed off by the UK secretary of state.
Dawn Airey is serving as chair until a permanent appointment is made.
The new chair will be responsible for appointing the next CEO, Mahon said in a note to staff. She added it was “finally a rare quiet moment” in which to leave.
She added: “There’s a new chair coming, and it’s the right time for them to appoint the CEO who’ll lead Channel 4 into its next chapter.”
Mahon’s overall wages at the broadcaster, which is commercially funded but publicly owned, dropped about a third to £993,000 last year. She is also a non-executive board member of Chanel, the fashion group.
Channel 4 is in the middle of a shift in its business model from a waning linear television business to a growing online streaming and social media model, where more of its audiences are.
Revenues at Channel 4 dropped to about £1bn in 2023, from £1.1bn the year previously, leaving a pre-tax deficit of £52mn, from a surplus of £3mn in 2022, according to the most recently available figures.
During her tenure, Mahon helped secure the future of Channel 4 as a public sector broadcaster following attempts by Conservative ministers to privatise the channel. She also led the move of parts of the organisation’s operations outside London, and put its Victoria head office up for sale.
Channel 4 has also secured the right to make its own TV shows for the first time in its 40-year history, rather than outsourcing production to the independent sector.
In her note to staff, she said: “We’ve protected the brand, even as we reinvented it. We’ve stayed risky, relevant and relentlessly new.”
Mahon will be temporarily replaced by Jonathan Allan, Channel 4’s operations chief, as interim chief executive while the board undertakes a search for a permanent replacement.
Also on Monday, the BBC announced a review into its workplace culture found no evidence of a toxic culture within the public sector corporation. It warned, however, that some staff had said there was “a minority of people at the BBC — both on and off air — who were able to behave unacceptably without it being addressed”.
