Television station E4 to shut for day to woo UK youth vote

Television station E4 will be shut down on the day of Britain’s general election in a move to encourage young viewers to go the polls.

In what is understood to be the first time a UK channel has closed on polling day, Channel 4 announced the move to encourage younger voters to get off the armchair and take part in the election.

E4 has 8.7 million 16-34 year old viewers every month but their E4 channel will be off air of May 7, save for a picture of “Darren”, the man in charge of keeping E4 on air, sitting in the channel’s control room.

Programming has been suspended between 7am, when polls open and 7pm when the channel resumes broadcasting.

Dan Brooke, Channel 4’s chief marketing officer said: “Fewer than half of under-25s voted at the last election so 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.”

A pre-election advertising campaign, running on all of Channel 4’s stations, will alert viewers to the reason for E4’s absence.

“May 7 is election day and Darren is going to turn E4 off so you might as well go and vote. You won’t forget will you Darren?”