Channel 4 is a public service television service entirely self-funded and reliant on advertising revenue to deliver its remit and licence obligations. Its statutory remit to innovate and present alternative views provides a different context to data protection compliance compared with the much larger publicly funded BBC. The main types of personal data processed by Channel 4 are for: All4, (the company’s video-on-demand service); programme making; advertising; competitions; Human Resources, and marketing.

The starting point for Tamara Ballard, Senior Data Privacy Lawyer, together with the Channel 4 Privacy team, was to make data protection relevant for everyone in the business (staff, contributors, viewers and suppliers), plan a communications strategy, and find ways of ensuring that data protection is embedded in every new project.