There’s praise for the government’s pressure on Channel 4 to boost its regional presence – and bafflement at why ministers want to risk its rare levelling up success
When Andrew Sheldon first started travelling from Leeds to London to pitch ideas for new television shows, even getting in the door was a challenge for his Leeds-based television production company.
“You’d get to London and get to the front desk and be told: ‘Sorry can you come back next week,’” recalled the founder of True North productions. Even when he did get inside, one senior television executive was notorious for welcoming the visitors from Yorkshire as exotic creatures: “You’d go and see them and they’d say: ‘How are things in the north’ and wave their arm across the sky. It was a bit like being in Game of Thrones.”
