Toonattik after six years leaves CITV along with Action Stations!, which closes down after five years of broadcast. New Year's Day also sees the final appearance of The Fluffy Club on Mini CITV.
Cable channel Bravo closes down after 25 years of broadcasting. Its sister channel Bravo 2 also closes down.
5 January
Avon and Somerset Police ban ITN from attending a press conference convened to give updates on the Joanna Yeates case after a report on the previous day's ITV News criticised their handling of the investigation.[1] The ban is subsequently lifted.[2]
EastEnders viewers have complained in record numbers about the soap's "hurtful", "unrealistic" and "exploitative" cot death storyline involving the character Ronnie Mitchell.[4][5]
Reporter Andy Gray is dropped by Sky Sports following sexist comments made by himself and fellow presenter Richard Keys against female official Sian Massey in footage recorded the previous Saturday.[8] Keys resigns the following day, in support of his colleague.[9]
February
Date
Event
1 February
The Sky HD swap is introduced giving HD channels more prominence. Sky also sees the launch of brand-new channel Sky Atlantic, and the Living channels are rebranded as Sky Living. Channel One closes down at 6 am, and is replaced on Freeview by Challenge.
2 February
John Nettles appears in his final ever episode of Midsomer Murders, having starred in a total of 81 episodes since the series was launched in 1997.[10][11]
The BBC apologises for remarks about Mexicans made on its Top Gear television programme but defends the original remarks as well.[13]
14 February
Channel 5 reverts to its original name after almost a decade.
16 February
BBC One airs a special hour-long episode of its daytime soap Doctors to celebrate the series 2000th episode.[14]
28 February
The ban on product placement in television programmes is lifted, allowing advertisers to pay for their goods to be seen on British TV. The first product to be displayed in this regard is a Nescafecoffee machine, which appears on This Morning.[15][16] A year-long trial also begins allowing commercial television channels to show up to 12 minutes of adverts per hour during films and dramas, bringing them into line with soap operas where this is already permitted.[17]
Channel 5 officially announces that it has bought the rights to show former Channel 4 reality series Big Brother from August 2011.[22]
6–20 April
Analogue signals are switched off in the Bromsgrove, Lark Stoke and Ridge Hill (Central and West) areas.
7 April
Top of the Pops returns to television in its former Thursday evening slot as BBC Four begins airing old episodes from 1976, the point at which the broadcaster's full archive of shows begins.[23]
BBC World News America presenter Matt Frei is recruited by Channel 4 News to become their Washington correspondent, while Newsnight correspondent Jackie Long will become Channel 4 News's social affairs editor. Cathy Newman will become the first new presenter to join the in-studio team at Channel 4 for 13 years.[33]
It is announced that Jeff Stelling is to leave Countdown after two years to concentrate on Sky Sports.[35]
30 May
After six and a half years, Emmerdale saw a new sequence to the opening titles of the series, with a new theme music, with new generic shots alongside a Range Rover driving through the woods, cuts sideways to a woman stroking a man's leg with her foot: a couple running upstairs in Home Farm, a dog in The Dingles' living room; then finally finishing on a new CGI image of the village, angled at Main Street which ends with the new logo fading on to the screen.
ITV children's gadget show Cool Stuff Collective is criticised by Ofcom for "product placement" over the way featured items are reviewed by the programme.[39]
Viewers of the BBC News Channel claim to have been distracted when newsreaders Martine Croxall and Carrie Gracie appear on screen to read the morning's news wearing similar outfits that are an identical colour.[44]
22 June
The last analogue television services are switched off in Scotland, making it the second part of the UK to have a fully digital service.
ITV recruits BBC political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg to be its new business editor. She will take up the role from September, and will also front editions of the Tonight programme.[45]
30 June
ITV confirms that Coronation Street will return to its traditional 19:30 timeslot on a Wednesday evening from September 2012.[46]
July
Date
Event
6–20 July
Analogue signals are switched off in the Sudbury area.
Inventor Tom Pellereau wins the seventh series of The Apprentice, and a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar, who will become his business partner in exchange for the investment.[47]
July
UKTV does a deal with BSkyB to provide on-demand content available to Sky customers via Sky Anytime.
Teesside comedian Patrick Monahan wins the live final of ITV's Show Me the Funny, in which stand-up comedians competed to win £100,000, a 12-date nationwide tour and a DVD release.[55]
Labour Party leader Ed Miliband's keynote conference speech is blacked out for five-minute after all media communications are lost by a power outage at the conference centre.[59]
BBC Director GeneralMark Thompson announces that BBC HD will close to be replaced by a high definition simulcast of BBC Two. This BBC Two HD will work much the same way as BBC One HD.[60] This move allows the corporation to save £2.1 million, used to count towards their budget deficit following the freezing of the license fee and the additional financial responsibility of addition services.[61]
14 October
CBeebies airs the final re-run of Numberjacks series 1. Re-runs of the second series continued until 2015.
15 October
Helen Flanagan, who plays Rosie Webster in Coronation Street, announces she is leaving the series after twelve years. She will film her final scenes at Christmas and be seen on screen until February 2012.[62]
High definition versions of Dave and Watch are launched by UKTV.
31 October
Channel 4 air the first episode of Top Boy, a four-part British crime drama series, written by Ronan Bennett and starring UK rappers Ashley Walters and Kano, about gang culture and drug dealing on a council estate in Hackney, East London. The series premiere is watched by 1.1 million viewers.
ITN confirms it has secured a five-year contract to resume production of 5 News from early 2012. The broadcaster lost the programme to Sky News in 2005. Part of the new deal will see the 7:00 pm bulletin move to an earlier 6:30 pm timeslot.[66]
9–23 November
Analogue signals are switched off in the Tacolneston area.
TV bosses are forced to apologise after the results of a phone vote for the previous evening's The X Factor appeared online before the lines had closed. The episode was also delayed for fifteen minutes by a technical glitch.[68]
The BBC has received over 31,000 complaints about comments made by Jeremy Clarkson on the previous evening's The One Show in which he said he would "execute" striking public sector workers.[72]
Matthew Wright, host of The Wright Stuff, apologises for remarks he made on 6 December edition of the show concerning a murder in the Western Isles.[74] A scheduled BBC Newsnight investigation which would have exposed the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal two months after the presenter's death is cancelled.[75] The BBC broadcasts two tributes to Savile over Christmas and it will not be until an October 2012 ITV documentary that the allegations become public.
10 December
After 25 years Casualty airs its last episode to be filmed in Bristol. Subsequent episodes are filmed in Cardiff.[76]