What is TV like over there? As I understand, a season has only 13 episodes, there are no commercials, and you pay a TV tax.
But, if a season is only 13 episodes, does that mean 3/4 of your year is reruns? Of course, maybe that doesn’t seem so fantastic if that’s what you’re used to.
What about the commercials. Is it only the government run stations that don’t have commercials because they have the tax. Do the independent stations have commericals? What are they like?
I also wouldn’t mind what TV is like in other parts of the world, it’s just that Britain in particular was bugging me.
BBC1 and BBC2 are subsidised by the TV licence, ITV and Channels 4 and 5 are supported by advertising.
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘seasons’; there is no fixed starting time for a series of programmes; they overlap so at any time there are some just about to start, others midway and some nearing the end. Some series are repeated, others are new.
Not everyone can get good reception for Channel 5 and as the newest of the terrestrial channels, it has a bit of a poor reputation.
It’s not so much “seasons” as “series”. One of my favorite shows is The Good Life (Neighbors). I recently purchased the DVD of the fourth “series”. That particular show had 4 “series” of 7 episodes each (as well as two specials - one Christmas and one Royal Command Performance). The four "series’ spanned two years. That’s one of the best things about British TV. For the most part, they don’t run a show into the ground. Go over the eight seasons of Friends, for example, and see how eps you could eliminate and still be able to enjoy the show.
There are five terrestrial (non-cable, non-satellite) stations. BBC1 and BBC2 are paid for through an annual license fee levied on all TV set owners. BBC1 is a mixed channel (sport, entertainment, news, drama etc) and BBC2 is increasingly mixed too (that’s where Buffy, The Simpsons* etc gets shown) but traditionally with a greater amount of educational, documentary and arts shows.
ITV is a commercial network paid for entirely through advertising. ITV (aka “channel three”) is divided up into regional franchises, although programming is 99% the same in daytime hours. The adverts are identical in style and format to the ones you get (assuming you’re in the US), although obviously produced for the UK market.
Channel 4 originally started as the highbrow arts and entertainment channel, but is now a mixed channel (it’s where Angel, Friends etc is shown) as well as showing foreign language and cult movies. Channel 5 is fairly recent and as such hasn’t built enough of a market to demand huge fees from advertisers. This has resulted in a fairly steady stream of cheap gameshows, US soft-porn (i.e. Shannon Tweed’s entire career) and the occasional Hollywood blockbuster.
We don’t have seasons like some other countries, since (IIRC) ratings are all-year-round. TV series’ can have any number of episodes – 6, 7 and 12 per series spring to mind from recent shows I’ve watched – although some dramas are almost non-stop (one show has started a 52 episode per year attempt).
We used to get a lot more repeats than we do now. Since cable has cornered that market, the terrestrial stations actually have an almost constant stream of new shows (although 99% of them seem to be ‘male/female cop/vet/forensic pathologist who breaks the rules’).
There used to be a stronger sense of there being 4 quarterly “seasons”, with one programme occupying a particular time-slot for a 13 week run starting in January, to be succeeded by another programme’s run in the spring, probably a repeat of some other show in the summmer and then another new programme occupying it in the run-up to Xmas. A 6 week sitcom would be a half-season in this scheme. However the trend in the last decade or two has been away from 13 part series, in both drama and documentary, largely because that sort of commitment is seen as too big a risk. You thus get old “warhorses” like, say, Casualty or Peak Practice and a lot of one-off dramas spead over a couple of episodes. As a result the patterns are now much more diverse. Schama’s History of Britain, the nearest the BBC currently has to a prestige documentary series in the mould of Civilisation (which was 13 parts), has even been shown in little runs of a few episodes, apparently as they were finished.
One lingering effect is that the channels still do a quarterly press launch for the forthcoming “season”, announcing what their highlights are going to be.
Welcome aboard, Gjorp. Just as a sidebar here, it’s a little misleading to say “government run stations” because that implies that the government has editorial control over programming or content, which isn’t the case. The BBC is funded out of an annual tax equivalent to $165 US per year. But it operates independently under a Royal Charter, drawn up in 1926, which basically gives it its own constitution and rules about what it can/cannot; must/must not do. In addition to the TV stations already mantioned the licence fee pays for six national and dozens of local radio stations, the BBC World Service radio station (available globally) and sundry other stuff.
There have been other threads discussing the range and duration of British TV shows, such as this one.
The BBC World Service radio service is not paid for out of the licence fee but from a direct grant from the government. Even with this direct payment, the government does not have any control over editorial or programme content. What it does do sometimes is suggest to which countries and in which languages the foreign content is directed at. Thus after September 11 more programmes were directed at the Middle East in the appropriate languages. The independance of the BBC was established way back in 1926 during the General Strike. Winston Churchill ( then Home Secretary ) wanted to use the BBC to break the strike and use it as a government propaganda tool. He was told in no uncertain terms by the Board of the BBC that they would not co-operate and thus the reputation of the BBC as being completely independant was assured.
You’re forgetting BBC Parliament, and the Radio Staions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 live, 5 extra, 5 choice, 6, Wales, Ulster, Scotland, plus about 30(ish) local stations). If you’re checking free digital channels, you get ITV News, Sky News, some World Cup Channels, Eurosport, etc, etc.
All in all, if we pay the £110(?) per year licence fee, we get the 2 free channels and about 6 Radio stations, all without adevrts, and another 3 channels with 3/4 radio stations with.
This ‘seasons’ thing is a bit stange as most of our comedy programmes have a run of about 6-8 episodes, but are written by one writer, rather than a team, but we also get US imports such as Friends, ER, Seinfeld, etc. which have longer runs. Whether you prefer the style of one writer or a team is a matter of taste.
Rayne Man: Sorry, you’re quite right about the separate funding arrangement for the World Service. It gets a direct grant of £170 million. More about it can be found on it’s own site, by the way. The About Us link there explains a little bit more about it.
funkynige: I don’t think Futile Gesture overlooked the radio services, the OP only asked about TV (the license fee is currently £112 btw).
Americans have often expressed surprise about there being a “TV tax”, but most European countries have national stations that are partly or fully funded by some tax-like levy. It would be interesting to see how US networks’ finances would look if they were only able to sell programmes into California or New York State.
Each of the main terrestrial channels has its own website, of course (see below), which gives you more information that you can get from nicky’s link, although Radio Times is our equivalent of your TV Guide.
One of the most difficult aspects of British television for Americans to understand is the notion of regional franchises.
ATV in its heyday broadcast to the Midlands seven days a week, but in London it had a weekday franchise. LWT broadcast over that channel every weekend. To an American this would be like Fox broadcasting to Cincinnatti seven days a week, to New York five, with WGN (or perhaps TBS) pre-empting that channel from Friday night to Monday morning.
In the U.S., cable companies are allocated franchises to serve particular geographic regions (Time Warner Cable may serve Kenosha, WI while AT&T Broadband serves suburban Chicago, for example) but there is no terrestrial broadcast equivalent.
And by ITV, is that a network name like ABC or NBC, or a generic name for any non-governmental program source like Granada or Carlton?
Yes ITV is just a blanket name for a group of TV companies that broadcast on one channel to different parts of the country via the regional franchises. The term does not cover Channel 4 or 5 or any of the cable or satellite commercial stations . As was stated above the BBC has nothing to do with the government and so the other companies could not be described as " non governmental" .
The UK is split into 14 regions, and for each region the ITV franchise comes up for sale every ten years or so. Each franchisee is a separate commercial entity, but they combine together in a way (I guess) similar to the Star Alliance of airline companies. Each franchisee makes or commissions its own programmes and sells them to the others via an internal market and so the programmes can be shown nationally. Each franchisee makes its own decisions about scheduling and whether/when to show stuff taken from the pot and its own stuff. In this way, Granada, which owns the ITV franchise for North West England makes the popular soap opera Coronation Street, but all the other regions show it too.
The regional schedule variations are small, and typically involve regional news/current affairs shows and sport.
ATV lost its franchise for London in 1967. For the Midland region it changed its name to Central in 1982. The two London franchises are currently held by Carlton (M to F) and LWT (S & S). There have been several commercial takeovers among the franchisees and Carlton and Granada hold eleven of the franchises, either directly or through companies they control. There’s been some talk recently of an all-out merger of all the ITV companies and scrapping current restrictions on maximum market share.
Depending on which way your aerial faces and how strong the signal is, its sometimes possible to receive two “flavours” of ITV from neighbouring regions, which you’d tune to different channels. There are also separate franchises for the national/international news - AFAIK that’s always been held by ITN – and for national breakfast TV.
The channel idents between programmes sometimes mention both the franchisee and the umbrella organisation (“you’re watching Carlton – part of the ITV network”).
I enjoy this site to see how all the network presentations have evolved over the past 40 years or so. It also gives a fascinating insight as to what the general style of TV is over there.
The use of clocks on screen to fill time I must admit is rather quaint. You could never get away with that here in the US.
