Christmas television used to be dominated by national treasures including Lenny Henry, Bruce Forsyth and Ronnie Corbett to the delight of families gathered around the box for the BBC show on offer. 

In its heyday of 1988, the Radio Times’ Christmas special made history as the best-selling British magazine of all time with a circulation of 11.2m. It laid the foundation for Christmas as a vital time for broadcasters to stake their claim in the content wars, pull in crucial advertising revenue and prove their cultural relevance for the year ahead.

Fast forward just over three decades and the landscape is unrecognisable. The BBC is now one of a plethora of options for festive viewing, jostling for prominence alongside the likes of Netflix and Disney.

Still, TV viewing across all formats is growing as viewers stuck at home for a second year in a row gather around laptops, phones and the TV set, while readership of the Radio Times is back on the rise. As the advertising and streaming competition intensifies, traditional broadcasters are facing one of the greatest tests of their mettle to date.

Commercial broadcasters are hoping Christmas 2021 will be a festive treat. After purse strings were tightened during last year’s lockdown, overall advertising spend is set to increase by almost £1bn in the crucial “golden quarter”, compared to last year, to the highest level ever. It comes as large advertisers and a surge in investment by ecommerce firms cash in their pandemic gains on brand building.

At the heart of this is television advertising, often viewed as the cornerstone of festive campaigns – a trend popularised by John Lewis. Industry body the Advertising Association is forecasting a 9pc increase in television advertising spend to £1.56bn in the final three months of the year – the largest rise in more than a decade.