Good Food (formerly UK Food and UKTV Food) is a retired subscription cookery channel broadcasting in the United Kingdom and Ireland, latterly as part of the Discovery, Inc. network of channels. The channel originally launched on 5 November 2001 and relaunched in its final format on 22 June 2009. Good Food was available on satellite through Sky, on cable through Virgin Media, and through IPTV with TalkTalk TV, BT TV. From 2015 to 2018, Good Food was temporarily rebranded as Christmas Food.
Prior to the launch of the channel, UK Style was the home to food programmes in the UKTV network. The increasing addition of more lifestyle programmes on UK Style led to these programmes overcrowding the schedule. On 11 July 2001, UKTV announced they would launch UK Food in November.[1] The channel officially launched on 5 November, broadcasting from 7:00am to 7:00pm everyday, timesharing with UK Drama.
On 10 January 2003, after a successful first year gaining 7.5million viewers since its launch, UKTV announced that UK Food would extend broadcast hours to 5:00am– 9:00pm, gaining four more hours in its slot. To make up for this, UK Drama reduced its hours to 9:00pm– 5:00am.[3] On 12 November, a one-hour timeshift service - UK Food +1, launched, airing between 6:00am and 7:00pm every day.
On 8 March 2004, UK Food and UK Food +1 were renamed as UKTV Food and UKTV Food +1, respectively. On the same day, UK Horizons' half-replacement UKTV People launched in UKTV Food +1's evening slot, airing from 7:00pm to 4:00am. On 22 June, it was announced that UKTV Food would extend its broadcast hours to end at 1:00am, with the possibility of going 24 hours at the end of the year. At the same time, it was also announced that UKTV People would move out of UKTV Food +1's downtime slot and extend its broadcast hours as well. With the extension of the broadcast hours, UKTV Drama moved into the vacated evening slot on UKTV Food +1's slot.[4]
After UKTV Drama extended its broadcast hours to the daytime in May 2005, UKTV Food +1's evening slot remained vacant, and on 23 February 2006, to coincide with Sky's EPG shuffle, it was announced that UKTV Food +1 would extend broadcast hours to include the entire day.[5]
As part of the rebranding of all UKTV's channels to a unique name and identity, UKTV Food rebranded as Good Food on 22 June 2009, the last of UKTV's brands to do so. The name was based on that of the BBC Good Food cookery magazine, published by Immediate Media Company.[6] The channel and the magazine continued to be operated separately. On 13 July 2009, Virgin Media revealed that they were "currently in active talks" with UKTV about launching a high-definition version of Good Food on their cable television platform.[7]
On 31 August 2010, Good Food became the first UKTV channel to broadcast in high definition when Good Food HD launched as a Sky exclusive. As with a majority HD channels, Good Food HD was an HD simulcast of the channel's schedule.[8]
As part of Virgin Media's deal to sell its share of UKTV, all five of UKTV's HD channels were added to Virgin's cable television service by 2012.[9] Good Food HD was added to Virgin Media on 7 October 2011.[10]
On 1 April 2019, it was announced that UKTV co-owner Discovery Inc. would acquire the BBC's stake in Good Food. They took it over along with sister channels Home and Really in June.[11] On 5 September 2019, Discovery announced that Good Food would merge with Food Network and close on 12 September 2019, with its programmes moving to the sister channel.[12] Good Food was removed from Virgin Media on 11 September, while the channel itself was shut down on 12 September 2019, after which the channel space created in 2001 by UK Food ceased to exist. The last programme shown was an episode of Choccywoccydoodah.
On-air identity
Good Food's old logo as UKTV Food
When UK Food launched in 2001, the channel adopted a branding package based around circular shaped foods with a spiral pattern located in the centre when looked at from above. The channel's logo at the time featured the name, stylised as UK Food, and a two lined spiral extending outwards from the right of the name. The majority of UKTV channels had some pattern located there to distinguish the channel, and this spiral also featured in the idents themselves as well as channel promotions.[13]
Following the rebranding as UKTV Food, the channel's identity was altered. The swirling motif was retained within the idents themselves: the logo was the only thing changed. Indeed many of the previous idents survived rebrand reuse. The primary difference was the addition of the two lined UKTV logo, aligned to the left of the screen.[14] The channels colour was orange, and was used in different shades as the background colour to all promotion end boards and static slides both on the channel and for promotion across the network.[15][16]
Following the rebrand to Good Food, the idents changed to sequences involving the coming together of ingredients to events such as a picnic barbecue, a dinner party and a family Sunday roast. The idents finished with an endboard featuring the circular Good Food logo in the centre of a screen with food imagery in the background, such as fish outlines, knife and fork or wine glasses.[17]
Former programming
Good Food used a large amount of programming from the BBC's programme archive, and was similar to a former international channel run by BBC Worldwide called BBC Food, as both use similar programming and both have a similar format. The channel also aired programmes from the ITV and Channel 4 programming archive and programming aired on other domestic and international channels bought in by the channel. These programmes included:
The Good Food website, originally devised and launched by Ian Fenn and Ally Branley, provided information on programmes shown on the channel, recipes, message boards, and a wine club. Recipes came from the various shows on Good Food and some included videos taken from the demonstrations. In September 2006 Good Food's website overtook the BBC Food site in popularity for the first time, achieving a 10% market share, compared to BBC Food's 9.63% share.[18] The channel's website now redirects to Food Network's UK website.
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