Soaps such as Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale have dominated ratings on the UK's terrestrial channels for decades. Other popular genres include game shows (Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, The Weakest Link), feature-length detective dramas (Inspector Morse, A Touch of Frost), comedy (One Foot in the Grave, Only Fools and Horses) and sport--particularly football.

UK prime time schedules during the mid to late 1990s were dominated by "docu-soaps". But the format suffered from over-exposure in 2000, and there have since been fewer successful programmes within the genre. In its place have come voyeuristic shows such as Big Brother, Survivor, Pop Idol and Temptation Island, known collectively as "reality TV". However, the popularity of this genre may be waning as others did, due to over-exposure. Two series of ITV1's Survivor have failed to capture the public imagination as Big Brother and Pop Idol have.