±«Óătv

About the ±«Óătv as an organisation

This section has our annual tracking reports on the ±«Óătv's Public Purposes, including reports about the ±«Óătv’s performance in each of the Nations of the UK.

You can also find work on media literacy, as well as research conducted for strategic projects such as the ±«Óătv’s 2010 Strategy Review, the government’s Digital Britain consultation.


Purpose Remit Survey reports


Audience research – ±«Óătv television and 'distinctiveness'

One of the Trust’s four strategic objectives for the ±«Óătv is to increase the distinctiveness and quality of its output.

We have set that objective partly because of a research finding that shows audiences think the ±«Óătv has been underperforming on its delivery of ‘fresh and new ideas’.

This finding has remained consistent, year-on-year, even as, in the Trust’s judgement the ±«Óătv has made some of its major television services (in particular ±«Óătv Two) more distinctive and as the audience scores for individual programmes – both for quality and for ‘fresh and new’ – have gradually increased.

Given that apparent contradiction, we wanted to enhance our understanding of audience’s perception and expectations of distinctiveness on the ±«Óătv and update our understanding of what is driving the perceived gap and what might be necessary to address this.

We commissioned Blinc to conduct a piece of qualitative research and they used a range of different discussion formats, including audience labs, groups of friends and families in their homes. The full findings and methodology are available here.

This research has shown us that there are some limitations with an approach that scores the ±«Óătv as an institution on a single survey question about ‘fresh and new ideas’. While this is an important measure of public perceptions of the ±«Óătv as a whole, we have concluded that we should also look for a wider range of different ways to assess how far the audience think the ±«Óătv provides a distinctive service.

We will now assess how best to do this using not just our annual survey but also the other information that the ±«Óătv gathers about how people rate its programmes. And we will consider whether there are other areas where it would be helpful to conduct more detailed in-depth (qualitative) research to complement our annual (quantitative) survey.


Strategy review


Digital Britain


Media literacy research


Licence fee collection


Audience engagement consultation


Complaints framework


Audience attitudes to the licence fee and public service broadcasting provision beyond the ±«Óătv


Delivering Quality First


Charter Review