Mass media in the United Kingdom
There are several different types of mass media in the United Kingdom: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and websites.
The United Kingdom has a diverse range of providers, the most prominent being the publicly owned and funded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
[5][6][7] The BBC is established under a royal charter and operates under its agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
[9] The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament,[10] and is used to fund the BBC's radio, TV, and online services covering the nations and regions of the UK.
The final station is the BBC Asian Network, providing music, talk and news to this section of the community.
A further six stations broadcast in what the BBC terms "the national regions": Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
BBC Online operates numerous sub sites that focus on different knowledge genre centred around the topics of science, nature and wildlife, arts and culture, religion and ethics, food, and history and language.
The Dave, Drama and Yesterday channels are also available on Freeview and Freesat, two free-to-air television services in the UK.
[20] London dominates the media sector in the United Kingdom as national newspapers, television and radio networks are largely based there.
Specialist local paper City A.M. is a free, business-focused newspaper published in print Monday to Friday.
[21] Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Cardiff are important centres of newspaper and broadcasting production in Scotland and Wales respectively.
[23] Founded by publisher John Walter in 1785, The Times is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, and is the originator of the widely used Times Roman typeface, created by Victor Lardent and commissioned by Stanley Morison in 1931.
[24] Newspaper and publishing magnate Alfred Harmsworth played a major role in "shaping the modern press" – Harmsworth introduced or harnessed "broad contents, subordinate regional markets, independence from party control" – and was called "the greatest figure who ever strode down Fleet Street.
[26] Founded by Thomas Gibson Bowles, Vanity Fair featured caricatures of famous people for which it is best known today.
[34] The United Kingdom print publishing sector, including books, server, directories and databases, journals, magazines and business media, newspapers and news agencies, has a combined turnover of around £20 billion and employs around 167,000 people.
[52] In March 2024, the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak announced a ban on acquisitions of newspapers by foreign states, following The Daily Telegraph and The Spectactor purchases by an Emirati group led by Sheikh Mansour, deputy prime-minister and vice-president of the United Arab Emirates, virtually forcing those takeovers terminated.
[53] A large range of magazines are sold in the United Kingdom covering most interests and potential topics.
British magazines and journals that have achieved worldwide circulation include The Economist, Prospect, Nature, New Scientist, New Statesman, The Spectator, the Radio Times, and NME.
"[54] The history of the book in the United Kingdom has been studied from a variety of cultural, economic, political, and social angles.
In recent years influential scholars include Frederic Sutherland Ferguson, Philip Gaskell, Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, and Alfred W. Pollard.
The British Library is also a major research library, with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings.
[57] Its collections include around 14 million books,[58] along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC.
The library maintains a programme for content acquisition and adds some three million items each year occupying 9.6 kilometres (6 mi) of new shelf space.
A free to air digital service is made up of two chartered public broadcasting companies, the BBC and Channel 4 and two franchised commercial television companies, (ITV and Channel 5) specializing in entertainment, drama, arts, science, nature, documentary, sports, comedy etc.
In addition to this, the United Kingdom's free-to-air Freeview service runs a large number of entertainment, music, sport and shopping channels from the likes of CBS, UKTV and Sky.
[69] The Radio Academy is dedicated to "the encouragement, recognition and promotion of excellence in UK broadcasting and audio production".
The telecommunications infrastructure in the United Kingdom provides internet access to businesses and home users in various forms, including fibre, cable, DSL, wireless and mobile.
[74] Broadcast media (TV, radio, video on demand, streaming), telecommunications, and postal services are regulated by the Office of Communications (Ofcom).
It has a statutory duty to represent the interests of citizens and consumers by promoting competition and protecting the public from harmful or offensive material.
[76][77] Some of the main areas Ofcom presides over are licensing, research, codes and policies, complaints, competition and protecting radio.
