Channel 4 is stricter than your parents, revokes E4 access on election day

Under-25s: what are you doing with yourselves all day? It sounds like an awful lot of you are glued to E4, because the Channel 4-owned Freeview channel is closing down on election day to give its audience a chance to get into the great outdoors and cast their vote.

Votes elect politicians, and the winners get to form a government and rule the country for the next five years - that's how it works if you've been too busy with The Big Bang Theory and Hollyoaks to notice.

From 7am-7pm anyone who tunes in will be met by "Darren", the face of an E4 advertising campaign highlighting the importance of exercising your democratic right to vote for whichever politician you dislike the least. The channel is also running a number of pre-election ads.

Low turnout

The unprecedented move has some sobering figures behind it: less than half of the eligible under-25s in Britain voted at the last election, and that's something Channel 4 wants to change. E4 is the number one digital channel for 16-34 year-olds in the UK.

"We've engaged the most powerful weapon that we have at our disposal to try and boost that number - switching off their favourite TV channel for the day," explained Dan Brooke, Channel 4's chief marketing and communications officer, when talking to the Guardian.

Voting is open until 10pm on the 7th of May so if you are an E4 addict make sure you've got yourself down to the polling station by the time that normal programming resumes at 7pm. Channel 4 has set up a dedicated site for its campaign too.

Via The Guardian