Category: TV History
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TV Unwrapped: 2025
You might remember around this time last year, I posted a long list of 2024’s top fifty television programmes. Except, of course, not in any order of quality, everyone else is doing that. I listed them by quantity. Basically, which television programmes were broadcast most frequently throughout the year. I mean, quality like Celebrity Traitors…
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So, What TV Programmes Appear Most Often on Christmas Eve?
Merry Excelmas! Here’s a quick post I thought of doing after exploring all the televisual fare on Christmas Eve this year, and wondering: are there any true mainstays on Christmas Eve BBC television? The big day itself has the regulars: The Queen, Top of the Pops, ‘stEnders. But the precursor to the big day? That’s…
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The Joint-165th Most-Broadcast Programme on BBC TV (also 200th)
What? Eh? Weren’t we done with this? Okay, the blog has been quieter than planned of late, and that’s because I’ve been stupidly doubling the number of entries in the book version of (now) The 200 Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes Ever (which also throws in full broadcast histories for BBCs Three, Four, Choice and Knowledge because…
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So, Has the BBC Run Out of Ideas?
Because it does kind of seem that way, doesn’t it? The schedules dominated by the same old programmes that seem to have been kicking around forever. But – is that really the case? Or, with the main BBC channels being the home for as wide an audience as possible, isn’t it just that the BBC’s…
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The Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes of All-Time: Post-Match Statstravaganza
Okay, now the Big Final Reveal is out of the way, and we’ve identified the two programmes broadcast more than any other on the main BBC channels, let’s get granular. After all, with so much lovely data to build statistical sandcastles with, we can pull that programme information into some other shapes too. For example,…
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Play School: A Look Through the Redux Window (Take Two*)
(*Fingers crossed, first attempt to publish resulted in a blank post and WordPress deleting the contents of my draft. So, fingers crossed. Apologies to email subscribers who received a mostly-empty email last night.) Who wants a bunch more information about Play School? You know you do. But first, a brief aside. Funny thing, research. When…
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The Two Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes of All-Time: The Grand Final
If this blog has a catchphrase, it must be “that took a lot longer than I’d expected”. And this one did. Not so much as down to getting together a programme history of the show in question, but more to do with checking the broadcast histories of the Top Two programmes. And O! The excitement.…
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The 100 Most-Broadcast BBC Programmes Of All Time: Pre-Reveal Recap
Firstly, Merry Christmas! We’re nearly there, and things are very tight between the top two. How tight? Well, so damn close I’ve actually felt compelled to carry out a full recount of their respective broadcast totals, as there are just seven broadcasts between them. One programme was shown 10,575 times, the other 10,582 times. So,…
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“He Might be Slightly Dodgy, But a Gooner He Ain’t” – The 3rd Most-Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time
Bronze medal time! But first, here’s something that you may well float your retro TV boat if you’re enjoying this rundown. Unstoppable word machine Ben Baker’s latest book – The Dreams We Had As Children – is out now, and it’s a bit of a cracker for anyone who grew up (or old) with a…
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“Available to Anyo.e” – The 4th Most Broadcast BBC Programme of All-Time
Here we go. After yesterday’s video version, here’s the good old Web 1.0 write-up for… 4: Pages from Ceefax (Shown 6491 times, 1983-2000) Well, here’s a controversial one. Partly because you could claim it’s not really a programme, partly because you could claim it should be classed as ‘news’, and partly because pages from Ceefax…
BrokenTV 