§  the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), which broadcasts television and radio programmes and online services;

§  the ITC (Independent Television Commission), which licenses and regulates commercial television services, including cable, satellite and independent teletext services; and

There are 5 terrestrial analogue television channels, offering a mixture of drama, light entertainment, films, sport, educational, children’s and religious programmes, news and current affairs, and documentaries. These comprise two national BBC networks, financed almost wholly by a licence fee, and the commercial ITV (Channel 3), Channel 4 and Channel 5 services, which are funded by advertising and sponsorship. Satellite television and cable services are funded mainly by subscription income.

99% of households own a television set. Television has become an enormously popular medium for the communication of cultural experiences. Plays, films, ‘soaps’ (long running serials often focusing on family relationships) and specialist arts and music programmes - which might together be referred to as ‘cultural’ programmes in the traditional sense - form a significant part of the broadcasting output of many terrestrial, cable and satellite channels. However, the format of television programmes is

Television viewing is by far the most popular leisure pastime, with average viewing time for all people aged four and over being around 24 hours a week for males and around 27 hours for females. Nearly 75 per cent of adults in the United Kingdom in 2003 stated that television was their main source of national news. 78 per cent stated that television was their main source of world news. The top five channels watched most often by adults in 2003 in the United Kingdom were the major terrestrial channels, BBC ONE, ITV1, Channel 4 and BBC TWO and Five.

BBC1 - the oldest television station in the world, it is one of the principal television channels in the United Kingdom and offers a broad mixture of news, current affairs, comedy, drama, games and quizzes, chat shows, children's, arts, and some educational and religious programmes.  BBC1 and BBC2 stand out from the sea of TV channels as they have no commercials disrupting programmes, in fact there are no ads whatsoever!!

BBC2 - Europe's first television channel to broadcast regularly in colour (from 1967), a channel for less mainstream and more ambitious programming.

ITV1 - is made up of 15 regionally based television companies. The network is the oldest and most popular commercial television channel in the country. It provides a broad range of daytime programming (shows, etc.); early evening is dominated by soap operas; it covers many popular sports.

Channel 4 - provides public service broadcasting and school programs, however it runs commercial advertisements to provide a revenue stream.

Click on the logos to see the homepage of the following channels

The BBC has five national radio networks, which together transmit all types of music, news, current affairs, drama, education, sport and a range of features programmes. There are also 39 BBC local radio services covering England and the Channel Islands, and national radio services in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, including Welsh and Gaelic language stations. BBC radio takes a 52% share of the total UK radio audience.

There are three national commercial radio stations. About 240 independent local radio (ILR) services also supply local news and information, sport, music and other entertainment, education and consumer advice. Most local commercial stations in the United Kingdom broadcast to a city or group of towns within a radius of 20-50 miles. Digital radio is growing in popularity as new stations launch and listening on new devices (such as the Internet) grows.

The BBC  

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the largest publicly-funded radio and television broadcasting corporation of the world. It produces programmes and information services, broadcasting on television, radio, and the Internet. The BBC is funded by public money from a television license fee gathered from all UK households with a television set. This fee is currently set at around £110 per year. (A similar licence for radios was abolished in 1971.) In total, the BBC's group income (from licence fees, commercial businesses, grants, etc.) is estimated at £3,835.3 million for 2005. The following graph shows how the company divided the income to cover expenditures:

Interactive means the maintainance of bbc.co.uk, for example

The BBC is, in theory, free from both political and commercial influence and answers only to its viewers and listeners. However, the BBC is regularly accused by the government of the day of bias in favour of the opposition and, by the opposition, of bias in favour of the government. Political influence may manifest itself via appointments to its Board of Governors and by threats to change the level of the licence fee. Commercial competition has influenced BBC programming on both radio and television throughout its history. BBC also has many non-broadcasting commercial ventures within the United Kingdom including book & magazine publishing (BBC Books), and multimedia production services (DVDs, CDs, computer games) provided by BBC Multimedia. The BBC's main services are the following:

BBC News claims to be the largest broadcast news gathering operation in the world (larger than CNN).

BBC One and BBC Two are the BBC's flagship television channels.

The BBC has five major national radio stations:

Radio 1 - 'the best in new music'

Radio 2 - the UK's most listened to radio station, with 13.7 million weekly listeners

Radio 3 - specialist-interest music such as classical, world, arts, drama and jazz

Radio 4 - current affairs, drama and comedy

Radio 5 Live - 24 hour news, sports and talk

BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC responsible for the commercial exploitation of BBC programmes and other properties.

The bbc.co.uk, includes a comprehensive news website and archive. It is the UK's most-visited digital destination with over 3 million web pages and that number is rising fast every day.

The Press

On an average weekday it is estimated that 62% of people aged 15 and over in the UK read a national morning newspaper. About 84% of adults read a regional or local newspaper every week. National papers have an average (but declining) total circulation of some 14 million on weekdays and about 15 million on Sundays. There are more than 1,300 regional

 and local newspaper titles. The national press consists of 14 morning daily papers and 15 Sunday papers as of 2005 (see table below). At one time London’s Fleet Street area was the centre of the industry, but now all the national papers have moved their editorial and printing facilities to other parts of London or away from the capital altogether. Editions of several papers, such as the Financial Times, Guardian and Daily Mirror, are also printed in other countries. Ownership of the national press lies in the hands of a number of large corporations, most of which are involved in the whole field of publishing and communications. There are around 100 regional press publishers—ranging from those owning just one title (about half of them) to a few controlling more than 100 each. In addition to sales revenue, newspapers and periodicals earn considerable amounts from advertising. Indeed, the press is the largest advertising medium in the UK. The British press receives no subsidies from the state.

National newspapers are often described as ‘quality’ ( Magyar Nemzet, Népszabadság), ‘mid-market’ ( Metro) or ‘popular’ ( Blikk) papers on the basis of differences in style and content. Five dailies and four Sundays are usually described as ‘quality’ newspapers, which are directed at readers who want full information on a wide range of public matters. Popular newspapers tend to appeal to those who want to read shorter, entertaining stories with more human interest. ‘Mid-market’ publications cater for the intermediate readership. Quality papers are normally in the larger broadsheet format, while mid-market and popular papers are smaller-size ‘tabloid’ format (see picture). Many newspapers are printed in colour and most produce extensive supplements as part of the Saturday or Sunday edition, with articles on personal finance, travel, gardening, home improvement, food and wine, fashion and other leisure topics.

Newspaper sizes in August 2005. The Guardian is in the British broadsheet format (74.9 cm × 59.7 cm), whereas the Daily Mail is a tabloid, and the Times a compact. A piece of white A4 paper is placed in front for scale. The broadsheet format is quite difficult to handle/fold.

There is no big national newspaper that belongs to a political party. While newspapers are almost always financially independent of any political party, they often express obvious political leanings in their editorial coverage, which may derive from proprietorial and other non-party influences. Every newspaper can be easily placed on the right-left political spectrum.  The right-wing is quite over-represented in the press (see table). This is an interesting fact since the Labour Party (left-wing) won the past three elections. One reason for this  is that newspapers tend to be owned by Conservative party sympathizers.

All the British newspapers publish online news and information, including more than 800 local and regional papers in Great Britain - England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

Click on the logos to see the homepage of the following dailies:

Periodical press

There are around 9,000 separate periodical publications that carry advertising. They are generally defined as either ‘consumer’ titles, offering readers leisure-time information and entertainment, or ‘business and professional’ titles, which provide people with material of relevance to their working lives. Within the former category, there are general consumer titles, which have a wide appeal, and consumer specialist titles, aimed specifically at groups of people with particular interests, such as motoring, sport or music. A range of literary and political journals, appearing monthly or quarterly, caters for a more academic readership. There are also many in-house and customer magazines produced by businesses or public services for their employees and/or clients.

The two top-selling weekly consumer titles, What’s on TV and Radio Times (BBC-owned), carry full details of the forthcoming week’s television and radio programmes and have sales of around 1.7 million and 1.3 million respectively. Reader’s Digest, which covers a broad range of topics, has the highest sales (over 1 million) among monthly magazines. Women’s magazines traditionally enjoy large circulations, while several men’s general interest titles similarly reached high levels of circulation during the 1990s. Children have an array of comics and papers, while magazines like Sugar, Smash Hits and It’s Bliss, with their coverage of pop music and features of interest to young people, are very popular with teenagers. Leading journals of opinion include the Economist, an independent commentator on national and international affairs, finance and business, and science and technology; New Statesman, which reviews social issues, politics, literature and the arts from a left-wing point of view; and the Spectator, which covers similar subjects from a conservative point of view.

Regional Newspapers

Most towns and cities throughout the UK have their own regional or local newspaper. These range from morning and evening dailies to Sunday papers and others which are published just once a week. They mainly include stories of regional or local attraction, but the dailies also cover national and international news, often looked at from a local viewpoint. In addition, they provide a valuable medium for local advertising. Of the Scottish papers, the Daily Record has the highest circulation. The press in Wales includes Welsh-language and bilingual papers (Welsh community newspapers receive an annual grant as part of the Government’s wider financial support for the Welsh language). Newspapers from the Irish Republic, as well as the British national press, are widely read in Northern Ireland.

Minority Publications

Many newspapers and magazines in the UK are produced by ethnic minority communities. Most are published weekly, fortnightly or monthly. A Chinese newspaper, Sing Tao, the Urdu Daily Jang and the Arabic Al-Arab, however, are dailies. Afro-Caribbean newspapers include The Gleaner, The Voice and Caribbean Times, which are all weeklies. The Asian Times is an English language weekly for people of Asian descent. Publications also appear in other languages, particularly Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi and Punjabi. The fortnightly Asian Trader is a successful business publication, while Cineblitz International targets those interested in the Asian film industry.

The Cinema   ® British Film History

At the end of 2000 there were 754 cinemas in Great Britain and 3,017 screens. The average number of screens per site increased from just over three in 1993 to just over four in 2000, reflecting the growth in ‘multiplex’ (multi-screen cinema sites sometimes built in out-of town locations) which currently account for over half of all screens and over two-thirds of all admissions. More than £539 million was invested in the British production sector for films such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Mummy Returns, Proof of Life,and Pearl Harbor. Shepperton and Pinewood, two leading British film studios, merged at the start of 2001 in a move designed to strengthen the UK’s production base, and attract more US investment.

Britain's biggest cinema screen opened in 1999 with a 482-seater auditorium: London IMAX

It has a curved screen for 3D movies.

learn more:

The BBC's international Commercial TV Channels

sources:

Wikipedia, Media of the United Kingdom, BBC

National Statistics, UK 2002, The Official Yearbook of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

James O'Driscoll, Britain Oxford University Press 1997

credits:

photo of London Imax © Glynn Field 2006

short descriptions of BBC TV channels and radio stations: http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/channels/ © BBC 2006