TV listings (UK)

TV listings in the United Kingdom are the lists of programmes that will appear on television over the next few days and weeks.

In March 1991, the monopoly on listings magazines ended and the market was opened up. Before this, there were two magazines on the market: Radio Times, launched in 1923, for BBC listings and TV Times, launched in 1955, for ITV and, from 1982, Channel 4 listings. A number of magazines appeared on the market at that time: TV Quick, What's on TV and the short-lived TV Plus. By the mid-1990s What's on TV was Britain's best-selling weekly magazine but in 2008 a rival publication, TV Choice (launched in 1999 by Bauer Media Group) achieved a higher circulation. TV Choice has a very similar design and format but at a lower price.

Traditionally these have been simple broadcast programming lists of what appears in chronological order on the various channels available, having been designed for an age in which there were only a few channels, and where the only medium was paper. Now there over 600 channels in the UK alone, the internet offers different formats and possibilities for TV listings (e.g. www.tvguide.co.uk), and television is starting to appear in both mobile and internet formats, so the whole approach to TV listings is changing.

The Press Association, Red Bee Media Broadcasting Dataservices, REDNI and DigiGuide are major providers of listings within the United Kingdom.

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