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This shows how popular astronomical channels, in particular, and astronomy, in general, is/are in England.

I’m wondering if we use “is” to match with the subject right in front of it “astronomy” or use “are” because we have two subjects and the first one “astronomical channels” are plural.

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    The first one. I would punctuate thus - This shows how popular astronomical channels in particular, and astronomy in general, are in England. You can see that and astronomy in general is a parenthetical clause and these can be removed without altering the sentence, so 'are' must be the correct verb form.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 16 at 13:55
  • To clarify - a parenthetical clause is one which is inserted into a sentence to add something, but which can be removed, along with its punctuation, without altering the structure of the sentence.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 16 at 20:11

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"Because we have two subjects"—that's enough to make it plural; ther order doesn't matter.

  • "Bread and jam are yummy" —two singular subjects, plural verb.
  • "Jelly beans and jam are yummy" —a compound subject made of one plural and one singular—still a plural verb.
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