Countryfile v War and Peace: how a farming magazine beat TV’s top drama
by Stuart Heritage from Environment | The Guardian on (#13TQA)
The finale of the much-hyped War and Peace attracted 5.7 million viewers last weekend - but Countryfile got nearly 3 million more. So how did a show about soil composition and hardcore weather forecasts become a balm to so many?
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Last Sunday, smack-dab in the middle of prime-time, a British television channel broadcast footage of farm animals in Suffolk. The footage centred around a lengthy, dry description of the county's soil, which apparently necessitated a generations-long effort to breed a specific type of horse with a specific type of fetlock. The channel was BBC1. The footage was a Countryfile segment. And 8.6 million people watched it.
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