ABSTRACT
Television Studies focuses on broadcast television in the English language and is concerned with the sociological and cultural context and content of the main UK broadcasting companies (Bignell 2004). It is perhaps then a worry that over the first ten years of the twenty-first century television audiences for the UK’s five main ‘terrestrial’ channels – BBC1, BBC2, ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – declined. Glanfield interprets the data starkly: ‘The five main terrestrial channels have recorded a combined average viewer share decrease of 32.5 per cent . . . and since 2006 every one of the channels has reported a year-on-year decrease in their market position’ (Glanfield 2011). Some of that audience is clawed back by the growing popularity of the big five’s digital channels such as ITV4 and E4 – the BBC has seven multi-channel options as well as BBC1 and BBC2, so this apparent decline in audiences on the main channels is not the whole story.
