When it comes to the world’s biggest TV ratings phenomena, you can forget Pop Idol, Big Brother and The Apprentice. The World Cup Final, the Olympics and the Super Bowl may briefly blip in to the global consciousness, but they have no staying power. Coronation Street has longevity, but its numbers just don’t compare. No, the real ratings champion of global television is surely the 7.30 p.m. weather forecast on Chin a Central Television’s (CCTV) channel one: rain or shine, the programme claims an average daily audience of 300 million — equivalent to the entire U.S. population.

That is the boast of CCTV, the state-run broadcaster that, in terms of market share and political clout, dominates the world’s most populous nation. CCTV is a propaganda arm of the ruling Communist party.

The weather follows the 7 p.m. news programme, which is compulsorily relayed by every provincial station because it sets the national agenda. Most broadcasts start with the activities of senior Communist officials — the order of their appearance strictly determined by their rank within the party.

But while that aspect of TV in China still fits the old-fashioned stereotype of a communist nation, there are intriguing developments in viewing habits that better reflect this fast-changing nation. The hottest programme in 2005 was Supe r Girl Voice — a Chinese version of Pop Idol — produced by Hunan TV and sponsored by Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt.

Just as in its British and U.S. counterparts, viewers were able to vote for their favourite performers via text messaging.

When making a documentary looking back at British television from the 1960s, greying witnesses recalled eerie evening silences on city streets, occasionally broken by the hurrying footsteps of a last tardy commuter rushing home to be in front of the set in time for The Prisoner, The Morecambe & Wise Show or The Wednesday Play.

Time romanticises memories, but that vision of viewing holds some truth. With two channels and no video recorders, watching television was of necessity a shared experience. Now, the reception of even a hit show is fragmented and elongated. You won’t see workers dashing through empty streets to catch Little Britain or Life On Mars because one section of the audience has recorded it, another is waiting for the box-set of DVDs, and a third may even be watchin g it on a laptop or, soon, a mobile phone.

Whereas British TV was once like stadium rock, it now more resembles a series of small, underground venues.

An average 54,000 viewers a day watch Baby-TV, while 3,000 tune in to the Business Channel. But, though now solitary rather than communal, viewing remains addictive — the average Briton still watches 23 hours and 56 minutes a week.

The odd thing about French television is that it is awful. Inane game shows, insipid documentaries, unincisive interviews, irrelevant dramas, incredibly lame cop series that the French have known since (literally) 1976, unbelievably dreadful four-hour Saturday night song-and-dance spectaculars presented by a bloke called Arthur and composed exclusively of cringe-worthy covers of Gallic hits of the 1970s.

The problem is that the medium itself is not considered suitable for serious endeavour. It’s a historico-cultural thing: TV was a state monopoly, and often a government mouthpiece, until as late as the mid-1980s. And in France the real talent has always headed for the cinema anyway. Once every couple of years, there’s a halfway decent contemporary drama, but the French would never dare, for example, take on a docudrama about contemporary political figures or events.

By way of comparison, last year’s top programme was France versus Italy in the World Cup final, which drew 22.2 million. Outside football matches, the most-watched programmes of 2006 were films (headed by the 1970s cult French comedy classics Les Bronzes and Les Bronzes Font Du Ski, Pirates Of The Caribbean, Les Choristes, and Asterix), all of which pulled in around 12 million; followed by a two-part costume drama about a celebrated post-war murder case (11 million).