Undoubtedly Channel 4’s Press Information Packs – comprehensive in content and widely circulated to the national and regional press – played a part in encouraging the free flow of listings information. And, until now, this has remained a largely unchronicled aspect of the Channel 4 story.

Although today the battle over TV listings may look like a storm in a teacup, it actually raised important issues – very relevant to the Internet era – about whether TV listings were the exclusive intellectual property of the broadcasters, or whether the broadcasters were obligated to licence this intellectual property, since the data belonged to the free press.