Interesting Facts

The first TV licence in the UK cost 10 shillings (that's 50p in today's money). (The licence was originally known as a wireless licence, and today it costs £145.50 for a colour TV. That's inflation for you.)

2nd November 1936 - The BBC opened the world's first regular high-definition (not HDTV) television service, from  Alexandra Palace  (affectionately known as Ally Pally).   http://www.alexandrapalace.com/whats-on/the-worlds-first-high-definition-television-service-80th-anniversary/

According to a report by BARB, the official body for collecting TV audience figures, nearly 5% of British homes do not own a television. (That's about 1.3 million UK households with no TV, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't watch TV: Whilst some people prefer life without the gogglebox, changing viewing habits have led to many watching TV shows on their PCs, laptops or tablets. Nearly half of the households without TVs are people aged 16 to 44. It seems that millenials are increasingly turning to other channels for their entertainment.)

According to the TV Licensing authority, the UK still has 13,000 black-and-white TVs. (London had the highest number of monochrome licences, at 2,715, followed by Birmingham and Manchester. Or maybe I should say there are 13,000 households with a black-and-white TV license. You see, a black-and-white TV licence costs £49 a year, but a colour licence costs £145.50.  You do the math.)

A continuator is a writer who chooses to finish the work of another author. (The latest book to be "continuated" is Charles Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, his only mystery story. It was his final book, published in 1870, but he only completed six of twelve parts before he died. No-one knows how he intended to conclude it, but Gwyneth Hughes not only adapted Dickens's half-written novel into a new television drama but also gave it an ending of her own. You could describe what continuators do as literary necrophilia, or maybe they simply keep popular authors alive.)

According to research by TV Licensing, people in Scotland watch an average of five hours’ television a day. (Tick tock, tick tock. You need to look at the previous post to make any sense of that .)

The storage capacity of the human brain is around 2.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes). (For example, if your brain worked like a digital video recorder there would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the telly running for 300 years to use it all up!  Actually, that would be really good - I've nearly run out of my 80 hours recording time!!) Source - Scientific American

According to the International Olympic Committee, the Beijing Games are set to become the most widely broadcast event in Olympic history. (Timo Lumme, the IOC's director of TV and marketing said that by the end of the Beijing Games, three times more TV and online material would have been broadcast than at the Athens Games in 2004. "The figure for total viewing in the world could be around 1.2 billion people," he said. In China alone, a total of 842 million people tuned in to at least some of the opening ceremony and more than 1 billion Chinese people have watched at least one Olympic event. Whilst in the United States, more than 40 million viewers watched swimmer Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal - the biggest Saturday night audience since 1990.) Source BBC News.

Forty years after colour TV was introduced to the UK there are still 34,700 people with black and white television licences. (Of course this doesn't necessarily mean they don't have a colour TV.)

Australian Soap Neighbours is the most watched daytime TV show other than the BBC's One o'clock news. (According to the Independent the BBC currently pays about £25000 per episode but Fremantle (the makers) are reportedly seeking more than £70000. So, now you know where your British TV licence money goes.)

Since the British soap 'East Enders' began in 1985, at least one of its episodes have rated higher than any other British soap opera throughout each decade. (This includes the 1980's, 1990's and so far the 2000's (the naughties?). So much for British culture!)