British television

From Freepedia

British television broadcasting has a range of different broadcasters, broadcasting multiple channels over a variety of distribution media.

National free-to-air analogue terrestrial broadcasters:

The BBC is the oldest British broadcaster. Its analogue channels are BBC One and BBC Two. The BBC first began a television service, initially serving London only, in 1936. BBC Television was closed during World War II but reopened in 1946. The second station, BBC Two, was launched in 1964.
Independent Television (ITV) was the name given to the original commercial British television broadcasters, set up on a regional basis in 1955 to provide competition to the BBC. Almost all of these companies have now merged into a single business. Its flagship analogue channel is ITV1.
Channel 4, and S4C in Wales, were launched in 1982.
five (previously known as Channel 5) was the final analogue broadcaster to be launched, in 1997. Its coverage is less than that of the other analogue broadcasters.

All of these channels are also carried on satellite television, cable television and digital terrestrial television services.

No further analogue broadcasters are expected to be launched, and efforts are being made to popularise the uptake of digital television so that analogue television broadcasts can be discontinued and the bandwidth allocated can be reused.

1 Digital terrestrial television
2 Cable and satellite
3 See also
4 External links

Digital terrestrial television

Digital terrestrial television was originally launched as a subscription-based service by a company called ONdigital, later ITV Digital, which failed commercially. The digital television service was relaunched as Freeview, a free-to-air service which is promoted by the BBC. The Freeview package includes all of the terrestrial channels mentioned above, some extra BBC channels, and a selection of the specialist channels found on the three subscription services, but not any of the premium ones such as top sport and movie channels. A more limited package of subscription channels has since been added under the name Top Up TV.

Cable and satellite

The major competitors to the old free-to-air analogue broadcasters are the subscription-based services of the regional cable companies NTL and Telewest, and the satellite broadcaster BSkyB. BSkyB is available nationwide.

In 2005, NTL announced its purchase of its rival Telewest, establishing a single dominant cable company offering cable, satellite and telephony services in the UK. The merger is widely rumoured to be intended to create an effective competitor to BSkyB.

Freesat, a satellite-based free-to-air service similar to Freeview, has been reported to be planned by a consortium led by the BBC.