Home / Media Landscapes / Background

The media landscape in the UK

Although the British middle classes achieved emancipation quicker than was the case elsewhere in Europe, the country's press landscape was slow to develop. The daily The Times was founded in London in 1785 - 180 years after the first European newspaper appeared. Notwithstanding that, The Times proceeded to establish itself as a model for other newspapers worldwide.

Tower Bridge
Foto: DavidGardinerGarcia, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc/2.0

For many years the British newspaper market made a sharp distinction between broadsheets, the large-format quality newspapers, and tabloids, the small-format, cheaper papers for the masses. Even though newspapers like The Times, The Guardian and The Independent now appear in more compact formats the difference in quality still prevails. Most British read the highest-circulation tabloid The Sun - or newspapers like the Daily Sport - mainly for entertainment. Papers like The Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times or The Times, on the other hand, determine which issues are discussed in the public domain and play a strong role in shaping public opinion.

The radio and television sector have long been dominated by the public service broadcaster the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which is financed with taxpayers' money. The BBC's nation-wide stations continue to be the most important and popular in the UK. In addition there are numerous other radio stations, most of which however are only local. As regards television, the BBC has had to contend with tough competition from private channels in recent years. The channels of the British satellite broadcasting company BskyB, a company owned by the American-Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, are particularly successful.

The Internet is constantly gaining ground against the newspapers in the UK. Here, blogs play a less important role than the flood of free news which has led to a decline in the circulation of the print media. Since June 2010 the daily The Times has been trying to counter this trend by introducing a pay model: online users pay two pounds per week. Other newspapers are following the results of this experiment with intense interest.

This country's media at euro|topics