Ford will sponsor Channel 4 Documentaries for another two years, despite pulling all its ads from the broadcaster’s controversial programme about pornographic content creator Bonnie Blue in 2025.
Channel 4 announced today (5 January) that the partnership with Ford, which began in 2021, will continue until December 2027. The car maker will be the main sponsor for nearly 300 hours of new peak-time documentary and factual programming across Channel 4 and More 4. The deal was brokered with the support of WPP Media’s Mindshare, Ford’s media agency.
The announcement comes less than six months after Ford removed its adverts from on-demand versions of 1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story, which followed adult star Bonnie Blue in her (successful) attempt to have sex with more than 1000 men in a single day.
The film, broadcast on Channel 4 in July last year, resulted in hundreds of Ofcom complaints and the children’s commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, criticised the programme for ‘glamorising and normalising’ extreme pornography. Other brands such as Visa and Smirnoff joined Ford in withdrawing their ads from the programme.
A Channel 4 spokesperson said at the time that the channel takes ‘great care to ensure that advertising is appropriately placed across all programming’ and that, in the case of 1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story, it had reviewed in advance and had excluded ‘several brands and categories to avoid inappropriate juxtapositions’.
But Channel 4 ended up pulling all advertising from the documentary on its streaming site in August, as a result of the pressure.
Executives have stood by the programme since. Chief commissioning officer Ian Katz said the show was ‘extremely successful’ and that it had led to ‘meaningful discussion’. Commissioning editor Tim Hancock added: ‘I commissioned this documentary because Bonnie is the tip of a huge iceberg. Since the pandemic there has been a cultural shift in the acceptability of creating adult content and the types of people do it.
‘I believe it is Channel 4’s job to tell stories like this that are at the edge of modern morality’.
A Channel 4 spokesperson refused to comment on whether Ford asked for assurances about content suitability as part of the deal, or if Channel 4 granted any such request. Instead they said: ‘We take great care to ensure that advertising is appropriately placed across all programming, particularly where content may be sensitive or potentially contentious. Programming is reviewed in advance of transmission to ensure advertising is suitable.’
Channel 4 said in the summer: ‘Channel 4 is a commercially funded public service broadcaster. We use commercial revenues such as advertising to make programmes that deliver our remit to create change through entertainment across a wide range of issues. Our programming is created independently from our commercial operation.‘
Main image from Rob Parfitt / Channel 4
*Correction (05/01/2026): A previous version of the article said that Ford ‘publicly demanded’ adverts be pulled from the documentary. This has been corrected.
