In the Birmingham area, 35 000 households were provided with access to the Living Health television channel for a pilot period of six months. The transactional logs showed that over the period 13 718 people used the system and that an estimated third of subscribers (34%) chose to view the channel. A questionnaire survey (n = 723) in the third month of service showed that nearly a quarter (23%) of respondents had used the service.a The analysis seeks to reveal what types of people used the service during this period and why.