British invasion.

Los Angeles ranks as the biggest market in a British Broadcasting Corp. campaign to secure local market carriage for its World News channel. That's because internal research by the British news service showed L.A. as the U.S. city with the biggest pent-up demand for unbiased international news.

The channel's demographic target is people in their 30s, evenly split male/female, college-educated, with some travel abroad. "It's for people who are curious about the world, and in a market like Los Angeles, there are a lot of them around," said Andrew Steele, Americas Bureau Chief for the BBC.

The BBC wants people to sign an online petition for their cable company to carry the chain's news programming. The campaign consists of outdoor images of 12 countries rarely covered by U.S. newscasts. The tagline reads: "See the world you've been missing, for unbiased global news visit demandbbc.com."

In Los Angeles, the campaign also features a wall-sized art installation at the corner of Ninth and Santee streets. The visual depicts a riot in Russia, one of the 12 underreported nations.

The BBC hopes to use the campaign's tally to prove the viability of the venture and pressure cable and satellite operators, particularly Time Warner Cable in Los Angeles, to carry the channel.

Advertisers can buy time on BBC World News on a global or regional basis. However, the typical commercial hole for a one-hour BBC show runs only six to eight minutes, compared with about 15 minutes in the U.S. Consistent global advertisers on the channel come from the auto, tourism, financial services and luxury goods sectors.

The channel utilizes a format of one-hour shows timed so that its big talent and stories hit at key hours for the big markets. It recently hired Rome Hartman. former CBS Evening News executive producer, to create a show for 7 p.m. in the Eastern Time Zone. On weekends. BBC World presents longer documentary-style news lasting an hour or more with a commercial hole of 14 minutes per hour.

Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at [e-mail], or at [phone], ext. 237.