The British Isles（Reference for Teaching）
reference for teachingi. 異域風情
1. newspapers in britain
if you get on a bus or catch a train in britain, especially during the morning and evening “rush hour” ,when most people travel to and from work, you will see a lot of people with their heads in a newspaper. more daily newspapers, national and regional, are sold in britain than in most other developed countries. on an average day two out of three people over the age of 15 read a national morning paper; about three out of four read a sunday paper. there are about 135 daily papers and sunday papers,2 000 weekly papers and nearly 100 papers produced by members of ethnic minorities (60 of which are asian papers). a lot of people buy a morning paper, an evening paper and a couple of sunday papers so it is not surprising to learn that national newspapers have a circulation of 15.8 million copies on weekdays and 17.9 million on sundays.
the press caters for a variety of political views, interests and levels of education. papers are generally divided into “quality” papers which are serious with long, informative articles, and “popular” papers known as tabloids because of their smaller size. tabloids are less serious and contain more human interest stories than news. in the 1980s a new quality paper, the independent, and a new tabloid, today, were introduced. today had pictures and pages in colour and that started a fashion; now most tabloids are in colour. newspapers are almost always financially independent of any political party. nevertheless, during general election campaigns many papers recommend their readers to vote for a particular political party. the paper's editor usually writes an open letter called a 'leader' to the readers.
ownership of the national, london and regional daily newspapers is concentrated in the hands of large press publishing groups. in the early 1990s the government's broadcasting bill aimed to pass laws to prevent too much media ownership being in the hands of one individual or organisation.
2. broadcasting
bbc radio and television and the independent companies broadcast a variety of drama, opera, ballet and music, as well as general arts magazine programmes and documentaries. these have won many international awards at international television festivals. in- dependent television companies also make grants for arts promotion in their regions.