Channel 4 News have now shifted to trying to blame the World Cup for their poor recent viewing figures, editor Ben De Pear had a sense of humour failure over an obviously light-hearted joke by Iain Dale last night. Funny how Channel 4’s annual report forgot to mention the football at all when discussing the News programme’s poor performance…

Dear @IainDale the good news is after the brutal competition of the #worldcup in 2018 – where live matches against at 7 halved our figures for 5 weeks, we surged from then on, and we believe we are up 15% + since September 2018. Which was when you started your @LBC show. Thanks https://t.co/mWvUIE5S4x

— Ben de Pear (@bendepear) June 11, 2019

One industry insider Guido spoke to dismisses Channel 4’s deflection attempts as a “real joke”, Guido hears that Channel 4’s latest upfronts left TV industry figures deeply underwhelmed. Rumours going around are that Director of Programmes Ian Katz could be the one getting the boot…