Kelly Webb-Lamb to Depart Channel 4

Kelly Webb-Lamb, Channel 4’s deputy director of programs and head of popular factual, is planning to leave the broadcaster later this year.

Webb-Lamb has been with Channel 4 for five years, working alongside Ian Katz in realizing the channel’s creative strategy, acting as commissioning lead for the 4 All U.K. strategy and has been instrumental in the channel’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In her three years as deputy director of programs, Webb-Lamb has overseen the popular factual commissioning departments responsible for over 1,000 hours of programming every year—from C4’s version of The Great British Bake Off to Gogglebox, Hunted and The Circle.

Webb-Lamb said: “Channel 4 is a very special place; quite possibly the most special place in the industry. There’s nowhere I’ve worked where your staff-pass says freedom, creativity and risk quite as loudly. It is therefore very hard to leave. But after five years and a whole load of change, the channel is now in a really strong place creatively, and I am super proud of what we’ve achieved. So it’s a good time for me to take the leap and say goodbye—new adventures are beckoning. I will miss my colleagues painfully much—even though I haven’t seen most of them in person for almost a year—they are the best commissioning team you could ever hope for. But I’ll be around for a good while yet. On Zoom, at least…”

Director of Programs Ian Katz said: “Kelly has played a huge part in shaping Channel 4 over the last five years and been a wise, generous and creatively inspiring partner for the last three. She is one of the most formidable people I’ve ever worked with, as mischievous as she is ferociously clever and passionate about what Channel 4 can and should be. She has a remarkable ability to make any show better, whatever the genre, and many of our most successful shows, from Old Age Home for 4 Year Olds to The Circle, bear her creative fingerprints. We’ll all miss her hugely but I’m enormously grateful for everything she has done for the channel, and delighted that she’s agreed to stick around till the summer to complete perhaps her most ambitious project yet, the Black Takeover of the schedule.”