Fiktiv UK - Channel 4

Channel Four Television Corporation is a publicly owned media company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Its original and principal activity is the British national television network Channel 4.

The company was founded in 1982 as Channel Four Television Company Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the IBA, and became an independent statutory corporation in 1993. November 1998 saw Channel 4 expand beyond its remit of providing the 'fourth service' in a significant way, with the launch of Film4. Since then the corporation has been involved in a range of other activities, all in some way associated with the main channel, and mainly using the '4' brand.

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Channel 4 is a British public-service free-to-air television network headquartered in Leeds, United Kingdom. The channel was established to provide a fourth television service to the United Kingdom in addition to the licence-funded BBC One and BBC Two, and the single commercial broadcasting network ITV. It began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. In 2010, Channel 4 extended service into Wales and became a UK-wide television channel.

Channel 4 is a "publisher-broadcaster", meaning that it commissions or "buys" all of its programming from companies independent of itself. It was the first broadcaster in the United Kingdom to do so on any significant scale; such commissioning is a stipulation which is included in its licence to broadcast. This had the consequence of starting an industry of production companies that did not have to rely on owning an ITV licence to see their programmes air, though since Channel 4, external commissioning has become regular practice on the numerous stations that have launched since, as well as on the BBC and in ITV (where a quota of 25% minimum of total output has been imposed since the Broadcasting Act 1990 came into force). Although it was the first British broadcaster to commission all of its programmes from third parties, Channel 4 was the last terrestrial broadcaster to outsource its transmission and playout operations (to Red Bee Media), after 25 years in-house.

The requirement to obtain all content externally is stipulated in its licence. Additionally, Channel 4 also began a trend of owning the copyright and distribution rights of the programmes it aired, in a manner that is similar to the major Hollywood studios' ownership of television programmes that they did not directly produce. Thus, although Channel 4 does not produce programmes, many are seen as belonging to it.

Its news service, Channel 4 News, is supplied by ITN whilst its long-standing investigative documentary series, Dispatches, attracts perennial media attention.

Part of Channel 4's remit covers the commissioning of programmes from outside London. Channel 4 has a dedicated director of nations and regions, Stuart Cosgrove, who is based in a regional office in Glasgow. As his job title suggests, it is his responsibility to foster relations with independent producers based in areas of the United Kingdom (including Wales) outside London.

Advertising on Channel 4 does contain regular variation: prior to 1993, when ITV was responsible for selling Channel 4's advertising, each regional ITV company would provide the content of advertising breaks, covering the same transmitter area as themselves, and these breaks were often unique to that area. After Channel 4 became responsible for its own advertising, it continued to offer advertisers the ability to target particular audiences and divided its coverage area into six regions: London, South, Midlands, North, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

At present, Wales does not have its own advertising region, instead its viewers receive the southern region on digital platforms intentionally broadcast to the area, or the neighbouring region where terrestrial transmissions spill over into Wales. The Republic of Ireland shares its advertising region with Northern Ireland (referred to by Channel 4 as the 'Ulster Macro') with many advertisers selling products for Ireland here. E4 has an advertising variant for Ireland, although Northern Ireland receives the UK version of E4. The six regions are also carried on satellite, cable and Digital Terrestrial.

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Film4 is a British free-to-air television channel owned by the Channel Four Television Corporation, that broadcasts films. It was launched on 1 November 1998. While its standard-definition channel is available as a FTA network, its high-definition variant is offered as a pay television service.

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E4 is a British free-to-air television channel headquartered in London, United Kingdom owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The "E" stands for entertainment, and the channel is primarily aimed at the 16–34 age group. Programming includes US imports such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Goldbergs, The O.C., Smallville, Veronica Mars, Everwood, What About Brian, Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother, 90210, Gotham, Rules of Engagement, The Big Bang Theory, RuPaul's Drag Race, 2 Broke Girls, Scream Queens, Revenge, Rick and Morty and Harley Quinn. Other programming includes homegrown British shows such as Skins, Misfits, The Inbetweeners, Shameless, Fonejacker, Hollyoaks, Coach Trip, Celebs Go Dating and Made in Chelsea.

E4 launched as a pay-TV companion to Channel 4 on 18 January 2001. On 16 December 2004, Channel 4 announced that the subscription channel would become a free-to-air television channel by launching on the digital terrestrial television system. E4 launched a Republic of Ireland service in June 2002, which has become the second most popular non-terrestrial channel in Ireland.

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More4 is a British free-to-air television channel, owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The channel launched on 10 October 2005. Its programming centres around lifestyle, documentary, and arts programming, and competes with the BBC's similar offering, BBC Four.

A half-hour long news programme, called More4 News is broadcast on weekdays at 8:00 pm, and is intended to complement the main hour long Channel 4 News programme that immediately precedes it on the original Channel 4.

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4seven is a British free-to-air television channel which was launched on 4 July 2012 at 7.00 pm. According to Channel 4, it was created in response to its viewers demanding Channel 4 to broadcast old programming from the network. Its programming focuses on Channel 4's top rated programmes.

4seven launched with 20 hours of content in the schedule per day. In the 8.00 pm and 10.00 pm slots the channel broadcasts a repeat of shows from the previous day that have created a critical buzz in newspapers, chatter on social media through Twitter and Facebook and reaction on the overnight log of comments kept by the broadcaster. The 11.00 pm slot is used to repeat the programme shown on Channel 4 at 9.00 pm, which air again on 4seven at 9.00 pm the following day. The rest of the programmes on 4seven are repeats of the most popular ones of the week. Weekends are devoted to multiple repeats of the best-rated programmes of the past seven days.

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4Music is a British television channel launched on 15 August 2008, replacing The Hits. The channel is owned as a joint venture between Bauer and Channel Four Television Corporation.

The channel showcases a range of pop centred on chart hits and current favourites. Originally, the vast majority of music videos were selected by viewers by means of calling a premium-rate telephone number, however the policy was abandoned with the channel playing an automated selection of videos and countdown shows presented by celebrities and singers past and present. Programming is often themed to coincide with events such as St. Patrick's Day and Christmas.

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The Box is a television channel in the United Kingdom and Ireland, owned as a joint venture between Bauer and Channel Four Television Corporation. Originally based on the US broadcast network of the same name, The Box primarily broadcasts music videos and features other music-related programming from across The Box Plus Network.

The channel is well known for its "First Play" feature, where many videos often make their UK or world premiere. This new music is often shown through the "Box Fresh" show. The slogan of The Box is "Fresh Music First". Past mottos include "Big Hits First", "Music Television You Control", and "Smash Hits You Control".

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Box Hits is a British commercial television channel owned as a joint venture between Bauer and Channel Four Television Corporation. The channel broadcasts general pop music in shows such as Chartbusters, which is recent music and Pop Domination, which is new and old music. It also shows other programmes such as themed countdowns and charts such as Top 50 Boy Bands. The channel also has hours dedicated to a particular artist or band such as Pussycat Dolls: Ultimate 10.

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Kerrang! TV is a British music television channel owned as a joint venture between Bauer and Channel Four Television Corporation, which is loosely connected to the magazine, Kerrang!. Its programming consists of rock music.

As of 2005, all of its programme content is music videos, the majority of which is open-schedule so as to permit text requests from their playlist.

The TV station's playlist is mainly nu metal, pop punk/skate punk and indie rock, although with some unusual exceptions. Many of the videos shown are heavily censored to remove profanity, violence, and references to God and religion. The censorship usually takes the form of dubbing out the offending phrase or by blurring the picture. This is often criticised by a lot of viewers, as of the fact that even the graveyard slot (9pm-6am, when no kids are watching) also doesn't show any video in the uncensored version. The response from the channel is, running uncensored videos during nighttime may increase the risk of it being broadcast during daytime.

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Kiss TV is a commercial hip-hop music television channel owned as a joint venture between Bauer and Channel Four Television Corporation. The playlist predominantly consists of old skool and mainstream hip-hop, grime and R&B.

It is based on the format of the Bauer owned London radio station Kiss, which started as a pirate radio station in London in 1985.

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Magic is a British music television channel owned by as a joint venture between Bauer and Channel Four Television Corporation. It plays mainly easy listening music videos and is based on the Magic radio station owned by Bauer Radio.

Magic mainly focuses on music from the 1970s, 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s.