Institution Research

E4 is a British digital television channel, 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 U.S. imports such as The Cleveland Show, The O.C., Smallville, Veronica Mars, Everwood, What About Brian?, Desperate Housewives, How I Met Your Mother, 90210, One Tree Hill, Ugly Betty, Scrubs, Rules of Engagement, The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, Revenge, and formerly Friends. Other programming includes British shows such as Misfits, The Ricky Gervais Show, Shameless, Hollyoaks, Skins, The Inbetweeners, Made in Chelsea, and My Mad Fat Diary. Some U.S. imports, such as Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty are screened on E4 up to one week ahead of their Channel 4 broadcasts. Its most successful broadcast to date was on 11 October 2010 when an episode of The Inbetweeners pulled in over 3.7 million viewers

On 16 December 2004, Channel 4 announced that the subscription channel would return to digital terrestrial television. From its 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 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 along withMore4.

In May 2005, E4 introduced "First Look", showing episodes of popular programmes such as Come Dine with Me, Hollyoaks and drama series such as Lost and Invasion in advance of transmission on Channel 4.

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.In October 2005, More4 was launched to complement Channel 4's digital channels. ER and The West Wing subsequently moved from E4 to More4.

On 31 October 2013, E4 premiered a refreshed look as part of the channel's rebranding. This coincided with the debut of the seventh season of E4's most popular show, The Big Bang Theory, as well as the debut of new homegrown comedy Drifters

BBC Three is a television channel from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16–34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent and new technologies. The channel is on-air from 19:00 to around 05:00 each night, in order to share terrestrial television bandwidth with CBBC.

Unlike its commercial rivals, 90% of BBC Three's output is from the United Kingdom and other European Union countries. 70% is original, covering all genres, from current affairs, to drama, to comedy to animation. BBC Three has a unique 60 Seconds format for its news bulletins, adopted so that operation of the channel could be completely automated, without the complication of dealing with variable length live news broadcasts. The current controller of the station is Zai Bennett

In late 2001, the BBC decided to reposition and rebrand their two digital channels, so that they could be more closely linked to the well established BBC One and BBC Two. Their plan was for BBC Knowledge to be renamed BBC Four, and indeed this took place in 2002, and for BBC Choice to be renamed BBC Three. However, questions were raised over the proposed format of the new BBC Three, as some thought the new format would be too similar to the BBC's commercial rivals, namely ITV2 and E4, and would be unnecessary competition. The channel was eventually given the go ahead, eleven months after the original launch date, and launched on 9 February 2003. The channel was launched by Stuart Murphy, who previously ran BBC Choice, and before that UK Play, the now-discontinued UKTV music and comedy channel. At 33, Murphy was the youngest channel controller in the country, a title he held since launching UK Play at the age of 26, although on 20 October 2005 it was announced that Murphy was soon to leave the channel to work in commercial television.

On 12 May 2011, BBC Three was added to the Sky EPG in the Republic of Ireland on channel 229. It was later moved to channel 210 on 3 July 2012, to free up space for new channels.

The channel's target audience is 16 to 34 year olds, and it faces heavy competition from rivals including ITV2 and E4, for an audience that the BBC has traditionally had difficulty in attracting. In 2008 it reached 26.3% of 16–34 year-olds in digital homes—the channel's highest ever such reach and above that of E4, ITV2, Dave and Sky1.

On average, nine million people watch BBC Three every week, and it has a 2.6% share of the 15–34-year-old audience and 1.4% of the whole population, according to the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board (BARB). These ratings by BARB, the official ratings agency, average out BBC Three's viewing figures over a 24-hour period even though the channel only broadcasts in the evening, giving a distorted sense of the channel's viewership. Despite several official complaints from the BBC, BARB continues to publish figures which the BBC argues are unrepresentative.

BBC Three's programming consists of comedy, drama, spin-off series and repeated episodes of series from BBC One and BBC Two, and other programmes that attempt to alert others of their actions through a series of programmes challenging common beliefs.