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I’ve been at the Edinburgh Television Festival this week and wanted to share the main things we at Â鶹ԼÅÄ Four are announcing. I’m pleased that the channel’s going from strength to strength; we’ve had an incredibly successful year with Slow Week, India’s Daughter from Storyville, and some very popular science programmes including Inside Sellafield with Jim Al Khalili. There’s also been strong arts programming, and the Proms have been really popular, so it’s fair to say the channel is thriving.

How are we going to keep up that momentum? Well, we are bringing back , which proved so popular earlier this year, with a Christmas twist – The Sleigh Ride. We’re also going to do a big music competition called . There’s also going to be the first live Â鶹ԼÅÄ broadcast from Television Centre since we moved out, in Live From Television Centre, we’ve got four regional theatre companies doing innovative theatre pieces – we are working with Â鶹ԼÅÄ Two on that as I’ll explain. There’s also good news for Scandi drama fans, we’ve three series coming this autumn: a new one called Beck, the return of Arne Dahl and the new series of . Other Christmas treats on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Four include Frank Skinner doing a history of popular entertainment with Suzy Klein.

For me the core thing that Â鶹ԼÅÄ Four is always about is innovation: it’s about innovation in form, with seasons things like Slow TV; it’s about innovation in content; and it’s about innovation in talent which is what Britain’s Best Part Time Band is about – opening the doors of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ to new talent who don’t normally get to appear on our channels.

Over the last year I’ve been working closely with Kim Shillinglaw, Controller of Â鶹ԼÅÄ Two, building a productive, effective and, again, fiercely innovative relationship with Â鶹ԼÅÄ Two. The plan is more combined seasons, like the India season earlier this year; next we’re doing one around theatre – which is what Live from Television Centre is about and there are other things coming down the line as well. There’s now a really close and clear relationship between the two channels where Â鶹ԼÅÄ Two brings the audience the universe: big things, big subjects, and what Â鶹ԼÅÄ Four does is bring you the atom, a deep dive down into content in a way that no other channel will do.

We also want to build ever closer relationships with our audience – so what I’m very keen on, in the course of 2016, is that the audience be able to get more involved with Â鶹ԼÅÄ Four. As part of this we’ve got an exciting project around Land Art where we’re going to invite the audience to contribute to build a piece of art in the landscape. We’re also doing some interesting work around social media and music: we’re bringing back Brian Pern, who is our comedy music guru, and he’ll be tweeting and talking about our Friday night music output and building a conversation with the audience around that.

Cassian Harrison is Channel Editor, Â鶹ԼÅÄ Four.

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