Two programmes captured awards from the Broadcasting Press Guild in March 1983: best comedy for The Comic Strip Presents…Five Go Mad in Dorset, and best on-screen performance in a non-acting role for Tom Keating in his series On Painters.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Channel 4 gave many popular and influential American comedy and drama series their first exposure on British television, such as Friends, Cheers, Will & Grace, NYPD Blue, ER, Desperate Housewives, Homicide: Life on the Street, Without a Trace, Home Improvement, Frasier, Lost, Nip/Tuck, Ally McBeal, Dawson's Creek, Oz, Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Scrubs, King of the Hill, Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, Star Trek: Enterprise, Andromeda, Family Guy, South Park and Futurama.

The popularity of Big Brother led to the launches of other, shorter-lived new reality shows to chase the populist audience, such as The Salon, Shattered and Space Cadets.

[28][29] On 31 October 2017, Channel 4 introduced a new series of idents continuing the theme, this time depicting the logo shapes as having formed into an anthropomorphic "giant" character.

[35] In June 2022 after a six-month long investigation, Ofcom found that Channel 4 had breached its broadcast licence conditions on two grounds: Missing its subtitles quota on Freesat for 2021 and failure to effectively communicate with affected audiences.

[40] In 2014, the Cameron-Clegg coalition government drew up proposals to privatise the corporation but the sale was blocked by the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable.

The remit changes periodically, as dictated by various broadcasting and communications acts, and is regulated by the various authorities Channel 4 has been answerable to; originally the IBA, then the ITC and now Ofcom.

Originally this arrangement left a "safety net" guaranteed minimum income should the revenue fall too low, funded by large insurance payments made to the ITV companies.

[59] However, the plan was scrapped by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, ahead of "broader decisions about the future framework of public service broadcasting".

[60] The broadcasting regulator Ofcom released its review in January 2009 in which it suggested that Channel 4 would preferably be funded by "partnerships, joint ventures or mergers".

[67] During the station's early days, the screenings of innovative short one-off comedy films produced by a rotating line-up of alternative comedians went under the title of The Comic Strip Presents.

Channel 4 broadcast a number of popular American imports, including Cheers, The Cosby Show, Roseanne, Home Improvement, Friends, Sex and the City, Everybody Loves Raymond, South Park, Family Guy, Futurama, Frasier, Scrubs, and Will & Grace.

Other significant US acquisitions include The Simpsons, for which the station was reported to have paid £700,000 per episode for the terrestrial television rights back in 2004, and continues to air on the channel daily.

In 1993, the Channel 4 Schools idents featured famous people in one category, with light shining on them in front of an industrial-looking setting supplemented by instrumental calming music.

[95] The programme's accuracy were disputed on multiple points, and commentators criticised it for being one-sided, observing that the mainstream position on global warming is supported by the scientific academies of the major industrialised nations.

[99] Against Nature: An earlier controversial Channel 4 programme made by Martin Durkin which was also critical of the environmental movement and was charged by the UK's Independent Television Commission for misrepresenting and distorting the views of interviewees by selective editing.

In the Alternative Christmas address of 2008, a Channel 4 tradition since 1993 with a different presenter each year, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a thinly veiled attack on the United States by claiming that Christ would have been against "bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers".

The broadcast was rebuked by human rights activists, politicians and religious figures, including Peter Tatchell,[102] Louise Ellman,[103] Ron Prosor[104] and Rabbi Aaron Goldstein.

The British media are rightly free to make their own editorial choices, but this invitation will cause offence and bemusement not just at home but among friendly countries abroad".

[106] Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4's head of news and current affairs, said in response to the station's critics: "As the leader of one of the most powerful states in the Middle East, President Ahmadinejad's views are enormously influential... As we approach a critical time in international relations, we are offering our viewers an insight into an alternative world view...Channel 4 has devoted more airtime to examining Iran than any other broadcaster and this message continues a long tradition of offering a different perspective on the world around us".

There are bases in London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Belfast, serving editorial hubs known respectively as 4Talent National, 4Talent Central England, 4Talent Scotland and 4Talent Northern Ireland.

These four sites include features, profiles and interviews in text, audio and video formats, divided into five zones: TV, Film, Radio, New Media and Extras, which covers other arts such as theatre, music and design.

The magazine covers rising and established figures of interest in the creative industries, a remit including film, radio, TV, comedy, music, new media and design.

Subjects are usually UK-based, with contributing editors based in Northern Ireland, Scotland, London and Birmingham, but the publication has been known to source international content from Australia, America, continental Europe and the Middle East.

Channel 4 moved the next episode to a late night (post-primetime) slot on a different day and continued to broadcast the remainder of the four-part series in this timeslot.

[107][108][109] Also in 2021, the channel launched Epic Wales: Valleys, Mountains and Coast, a version of its More4 documentaries The Pennines: Backbone of Britain,[110] The Yorkshire Dales and The Lakes[111] and Devon and Cornwall.

[114][115][116] was initially broadcast in a prime Friday night slot at 8pm, in the hour before its comedy shows,[117] but was dumped by the channel before the series was completed and replaced by repeats.

The first edition was negatively received,[141] with Anita Singh, the arts and entertainments editor for The Telegraph writing that the show was "the most ill-conceived programme idea since Prince Edward dreamt up It's a Royal Knockout".

[146] To mark the network's 40th anniversary, Channel 4 began to phase in another rebranding in November 2022, and announced that new idents were being produced that would be "an unexpected and daring portrait of Britain retold".

As his job title suggests, it is his responsibility to foster relations with independent producers based in areas of the United Kingdom (including Wales) outside London.