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E4
Launched	18 January 2001
Owned by	Channel 4 Television Corporation
Picture format	16:9/4:3, 576i (SDTV)
Audience share	1.0% (0.5% for E4+1) (November 2007, [1])
Sister channel(s)	Channel 4, More4, Film4
Timeshift service	E4+1
Website	www.e4.com
Availability
Terrestrial
Freeview	Channel 29 Channel 30 (+1)
Satellite
Sky Digital	Channel 136 Channel 137 (+1)
Cable
Virgin Media	Channel 144 Channel 145 (+1)
UPC Ireland	Channel 112 Channel 113 (+1)
Tiscali TV	Channel 14

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 16 - 35 age group. Programming includes US imports such as Friends, ER, The O.C., Smallville, The Sopranos, What About Brian?, Desperate Housewives, One Tree Hill, Scrubs, and British dramas such as Shameless and Skins. Some of the imports, e.g. The OC, Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives, are screened on E4 up to one week ahead of their Channel 4 broadcasts.

When the Big Brother reality show is being transmitted E4 devotes much of its schedule to live coverage from inside the Big Brother house; interactive features that give access to additional camera angles have also been transmitted. The channel also allows Big Brother voting options and Big Brother repeats. Big Brother coverage is among the highest-rating programming on the channel, and comes at a time when most of the year's American imports have ended.

E4 share of viewing 2001-2007 BARB figures

On 16 December 2004, Channel 4 announced that the subscription channel would launch on digital terrestrial television. It was a 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 is also available as part of the basic Sky Digital satellite subscription channel package, due to a long term contract with BSkyB due to expire in 2008.

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

In August 2005 E4 became a 24-hour channel with the introduction of E4 Music. It transmits from 6 a.m. (7am on E4+1) unless Big Brother or other reality shows are in progress.

In October 2005 More4 was launched to complement Channel 4's digital channels. The West Wing has since been moved exclusively to More4.

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; Sky One is the most popular.[2].

Since 2006 E4 has sponsored the E4 UdderBELLY venue (part of Underbelly) at the Edinburgh Fringe and Brighton Festival. The venue took the form of a giant upside cow in the purple colour of E4's logo.

In July 2007 it was announced Channel 4 would be launching E4 Radio, the first of a network of channels to be broadcast on DAB radio .The station will be launched in July 2008 and will be aimed at a similar demographic to its sister television channel.^[1]

E4 has become somewhat notorious for its strange promotion campaigns, narrated by the infamous ‘voice of E4’, the late Patrick Allen. Since Allen's death in 2006, the similar voice of Peter Dickson has been used. Trailers often make use of dry humour and phrases which at first, do not appear to make any sense. Past examples include:

• “Big shiny films in your dinky little home!”
• “In 1886 we invented music telly. We just didn't bother telling anybody.”
• “The bestest stuff that’s better than any other stuff.”
• “Second chance Sunday — not just a bunch of repeats, honest.”
• “It's funnier than a cat in a bomber jacket!”

Programme trailers sometimes have the narrator repeating things that characters have said, such as, in a trailer for Ugly Betty that includes one character asking Betty "Why are you crying in the bathroom?", the narrator immediately asks "Why is Betty crying in the bathroom?!". And on another occasion he says "Oh No! Kerry Katona must be double booked." Commenting on a cameo by Victoria Beckham. Sometimes the narrator appears to interact with the characters of the programme, especially notable in recent trailers for Miss Match and What About Brian.

Films are usually gently ridiculed in their promotion, such as with the voice of E4 telling viewers they "probably will" guess the ending of She's All That and naming actress Kim Cattrall as "That slaggy one from Sex and the City" when advertising an old film she was in. There is also quite heavy use of British words which have generally fallen out of circulation, such as ‘ruddy’ and ‘gaff’.

E4's continuity sends up the channel's Friends-reliant schedule - while in the past, announcements would generally be the same for example "Now it's time to relax with Friends", more recently the announcers have been more inventive with phrases such as "....after an episode of Friends we've shown so many times the tape's gone a bit wobbly" before a Series 1 episode which indeed had a distorted soundtrack. The "Next" DOG which runs towards the end of programmes on the channel parodies the schedule with phrases such as "Next: The One with Jennifer Aniston". Another example of using Friends to get ratings was via promotion for the sitcom The Class; the show was continuously billed as being from one of the creators of Friends, David Crane. When a late schedule change meant an edition of Big Brother's Big Mouth was moved to Channel 4 in a bid to up ratings, the E4 announcer, Dominic O'Shea said: "Instead, well, I dunno, we'll probably just show another Friends or something."

On one occasion when a playout-error caused part of an episode of Desperate Housewives to be repeated, the announcer said, "I know we repeat ourselves a lot on E4 but that was of course a technical fault. Hopefully we'll have it fixed by the time it's repeated on Sunday,"[3] playing on the fact that many of E4's imported American drama programmes are shown at least twice for each episode.

• E4.com official site