In order to aid the recruitment of Police Community Support Officers and to improve the public's opinions about them, a communications programme was built around an advertiser-funded television programme 'Beat: Life on the Street'. The programme achieved the objective of improving the public's value of PCSOs, from an average of 28% pre-campaign, to 45% after the advertising and up to 62% after watching the programme. It became the UK's biggest ever ad-funded programme with each episode being watched by an average of 2.5 million people. The campaign also proved effective at encouraging candidates to apply to become PCSOs