BBC Four
Categories: British television channel stubs | BBC television channels in the UK
| BBC Four | |
|---|---|
| Image:BBC Four logo.png | |
| Launched: | March 2 2002 |
| Audience Share : | 0.4% (Sept '05 [1]) |
| Owned By: | BBC |
| Replaced: | BBC Knowledge |
| www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour | |
| Availability | |
| Terrestrial | |
| Freeview: | Channel 9 |
| Satellite | |
| Sky Digital: | Channel 116 |
| Cable | |
| NTL: | Channel 127 |
| Telewest: | Channel 107 |
BBC Four is a BBC television channel available to digital television (Freeview, satellite and cable) viewers in the UK. The successor to an earlier digital channel called BBC Knowledge, BBC Four began broadcasting on March 2 2002 - its first evening's programming being simulcast on BBC Two. Its first slogan was "everybody needs a place to think", intended to capture the concept of a channel with high quality original programming.
The channel broadcasts a mixture of art- and science-related documentaries, vintage drama (including many rare black and white programmes), and non-English language films.
On weekdays the channel shows a 30-minute global news programme called The World, simulcast with and produced by BBC World. It screens a huge number of original documentaries such as The Century Of The Self and The Trial of Henry Kissinger.
Drama has given the channel its most popular programmes, with The Alan Clark Diaries (2003) producing the record audience figure to date, over 800,000 viewers. A notable recent production was a live re-make of the 1953 science-fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment, adapted from the original scripts into a single, updated two-hour version, broadcast on the evening of Saturday 2 April 2005. Discounting BBC Four's previous live relays of theatrical Shakespeare productions, this was the first live made-for-television drama to be broadcast by the BBC for twenty years, and gained BBC Four its second highest ever viewing figure of 482,000.
At the 2004 Edinburgh International Television Festival, BBC Four won the Non-Terrestrial Channel of the Year award.
On the Freeview digital terrestrial platform, BBC Four is broadcast in a statistically multiplexed stream in Multiplex 1 that timeshares with the CBeebies channel; broadcasting from 7 pm to (up until) 7 am every day, although usually finishing earlier.