E4 (channel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| E4 | |
|---|---|
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| E4 logo | |
| Launched | 18 January 2001 |
| Owned by | Channel 4 Television Corporation |
| Picture format | 16:9/4:3, 576i (SDTV) |
| Audience share | 1.3% (0.6% for E4+1) (March 2009, BARB) |
| Country | United Kingdom Ireland |
| Sister channel(s) | Channel 4, More4, Film4, 4Music |
| Timeshift service | E4+1 |
| Website | www.e4.com |
| Availability | |
| Terrestrial | |
| Freeview | Channel 28 Channel 29 (+1) |
| On/ITV Digital | Channel 42 (until May 2002) |
| Satellite | |
| Freesat | Channel 122 Channel 123 (+1) |
| Sky Digital | Channel 136 Channel 137 (+1) |
| Astra 2D | 10729V 22000 5/6 |
| Cable | |
| Virgin Media | Channel 143 Channel 144 (+1) |
| UPC Ireland | Channel 112 Channel 113 (+1) |
| Cablecom | Channel 164 (CH-D) |
| IPTV over ADSL | |
| Tiscali TV | Channel 14 |
E4 is a digital television channel in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, launched as a pay-TV companion to Channel 4 on 18 January 2001. The "E" stands for entertainment, and the channel is mainly aimed at the lucrative 15 - 35 age group. Programming includes US imports such as Friends, ER, The O.C., Smallville, The Sopranos, What About Brian?, Desperate Housewives, 90210, Gilmore Girls, One Tree Hill, Scrubs, and British dramas such as Shameless, Hollyoaks, Skins and Nearly Famous. Some of the imports, e.g. The O.C., Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives, are screened on E4 up to one week ahead of their Channel 4 broadcasts.
When the Big Brother reality show is being transmitted E4 devotes much of its schedule to live coverage from inside the Big Brother house; interactive features that give access to additional camera angles have also been transmitted. The channel also has Big Brother voting options, "Big Brother" spin off shows such as Big Brother Live, Big Brother's Little Brother, Big Brother's Big Mouth, Big Brother's Diary Room Uncut and Big Brother highlights repeats. Big Brother coverage is among the highest-rating programming on the channel, and comes at a time when most of the year's American imports have ended.
On 16 December 2004, Channel 4 announced that the subscription channel would return to digital terrestrial television. From it's launch until the closure of ITV Digital it was available as a bonus subscription channel. It became part of the Top Up TV subscription scheme until 27 May 2005, when the channel became available on Freeview, with the potential to increase advertising revenue by attracting a larger audience.
E4 was also available as part of the basic Sky Digital satellite subscription channel package, due to a long term contract with BSkyB it only became free-to-air in 2008. This change happened on 6 May 2008 and the channel joined Freesat alongside with More4.
In May 2005 E4 introduced "First Look", showing episodes of popular programmes such as Hollyoaks and drama series such as Lost and Invasion in advance of transmission on Channel 4.
In August 2005 E4 became a 24-hour channel with the introduction of E4 Music. It transmits from 5 a.m. (6am on E4+1) unless Big Brother or other reality shows are in progress.
In October 2005 More4 was launched to complement Channel 4's digital channels. The West Wing has since been moved exclusively to More4.
E4 launched a Republic of Ireland service in June 2002 which has become the second most popular non-terrestrial channel in Ireland with 1.1% of the audience; Sky1 is the most popular.[1].
Since 2006 E4 has sponsored the E4 UdderBELLY venue (part of Underbelly) at the Edinburgh Fringe and Brighton Festival. The venue took the form of a giant upside cow in the purple colour of E4's logo.
In July 2007 it was announced Channel 4 would be launching E4 Radio, the first of a network of channels to be broadcast on DAB radio .The station was to be launched in July 2008 and aimed at a similar demographic to its sister television channel, [1] however this launch date was delayed and then in October 2008 Channel 4 announced it was abandoning its plans for digital radio.
As of 10am on Thursday June 4th 2009 E4 Music ceased broadcasting on E4 and it's timeshifted channel E4+1, the music service still remains on 4Music.
[edit] Promotions
E4 has become somewhat notorious for its strange promotion campaigns, narrated by the infamous ‘voice of E4’, the late Patrick Allen. Since Allen's death in 2006, the similar voice of Peter Dickson has been used. Trailers often make use of dry humour and phrases which, at first, do not appear to make any sense. Past examples include:
- “Big shiny films in your dinky little home!”
- "Coming To You, Straight into Your Telly Box"
- “Second chance Sunday — not just a bunch of repeats, honest.”
Programme trailers sometimes have the narrator repeating things that characters have said, such as, in a trailer for Ugly Betty that includes one character asking Betty "Why are you crying in the bathroom?", the narrator immediately asks "Why is Betty crying in the bathroom?!". And on another occasion he says "Oh No! Kerry Katona must be double booked." commenting on a cameo by Victoria Beckham. Sometimes the narrator appears to interact with the characters of the programme, especially notable in recent trailers for Miss Match and What About Brian.
Films are usually gently ridiculed in their promotion, such as with the voice of E4 telling viewers they "probably will" guess the ending of She's All That and naming actress Kim Cattrall as "That slaggy one from Sex and the City" when advertising Big Trouble in Little China. There is also quite heavy use of British words which have generally fallen out of circulation, such as ‘ruddy’ and ‘gaff’.
Occasionally, the E4 narrator narrates for trailers which will show on More4, ending with him being caught off guard that he's narrating for a "different" channel.
E4's continuity sends up the channel's Friends-reliant schedule - while in the past, announcements would generally be the same for example "Now it's time to relax with Friends", more recently the announcers have been more inventive with phrases such as "....after an episode of Friends we've shown so many times the tape's gone a bit wobbly" before a Series 1 episode which indeed had a distorted soundtrack. The "Next" DOG which runs towards the end of programmes on the channel parodies the schedule with phrases such as "Next: The One with Jennifer Aniston". Another example of using Friends to get ratings was via promotion for the sitcom The Class; the show was continuously billed as being from one of the creators of Friends, David Crane. When a late schedule change meant an edition of Big Brother's Big Mouth was moved to Channel 4 after a controversial incident in the Big Brother house, the E4 announcer, Dominic O'Shea said: "Instead, well, I dunno, we'll probably just show another Friends or something." There have only been a handful of days since the creation of E4 when Friends hasn't been shown, after the previous day's editions, the continuity announcers have been heard to say things like, 'Hell must have frozen over because there's no Friends on tomorrow.'
On one occasion when a playout-error caused part of an episode of Desperate Housewives to be repeated, O'Shea said, "I know we repeat ourselves a lot on E4 but that was of course a technical fault. Hopefully we'll have it fixed by the time it's repeated on Sunday,"[2] playing on the fact that many of E4's imported American drama programmes are shown at least twice for each episode.
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- E4.com official site
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