MEDIA: How multi-channel viewing has forced social change

One of the more cheery seasonal discoveries I’ve made recently is that, although Britain may be a nation of couch potatoes, with extra TV sets becoming part of the standard bedroom furniture, we are not as atomised as we think we are. I’d long assumed that TV viewing was going the way of magazine publishing and Internet surfing, ever more specialised, with the rise of special interest zones and niche cable and satellite pushing the trend forward: children watching cartoon channels, men watching football.