The BBC News channel is a British free-to-air public broadcast television news channel owned and operated by the BBC. The channel is based at and broadcasts from Broadcasting House in the West End of London from which it is anchored during British daytime, with overnight broadcasts anchored from Washington, D.C. and Singapore. It was launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 5:30 pm as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic television channels, becoming the first competitor to Sky News, which had been running since 1989.
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded entirely by its commercial activities, including publicity. It began its transmission in 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service in the United Kingdom. At the time, the only other channels were the licence-funded BBC1 and BBC2, and a single commercial broadcasting network ITV.
Freeview is the United Kingdom's sole digital terrestrial television platform. It is operated by Everyone TV and DTV Services Ltd, a joint venture between the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky. It was launched on 30 October 2002, taking over the licence from ITV Digital which collapsed that year. The service provides consumer access via an aerial to the seven DTT multiplexes covering the United Kingdom. As of July 2020, it has 85 TV channels, 26 digital radio channels, 10 HD channels, six text services, 11 streamed channels, and one interactive channel.
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream and popular BBC One.
Regular television broadcasts in the United Kingdom started in 1936 as a public service which was free of advertising, which followed the first demonstration of a transmitted moving image in 1926. Currently, the United Kingdom has a collection of free-to-air, free-to-view and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channels for consumers as well as on-demand content. There are six main channel owners who are responsible for most material viewed.
Sky Cinema is a British subscription film service owned by Sky Group. In the United Kingdom, Sky Cinema channels currently broadcast on the Sky satellite and Virgin Media cable platforms, and in addition Sky Cinema on demand content are available through these as well as via NOW, EE TV and TalkTalk TV.
ITV2 is a British free-to-air television channel owned by ITV Digital Channels, a division of ITV plc. It was launched on 7 December 1998. For a number of years, it had the largest audience share after the five analogue terrestrial stations, a claim now held by its sister service ITV3 both of which are freely available to a majority of households.
UTV is the ITV region covering Northern Ireland, ITV subsidiary and the former on-air name of the free-to-air public broadcast television channel serving the area. It is run by ITV plc and is responsible for the regional news service and other programmes made principally for the area.
Film4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned by Channel Four Television Corporation launched on 1 November 1998, devoted to broadcasting films. While its standard-definition channel is available on Freeview and Freesat platforms, its high-definition variant is offered only as a pay television service.
UKTV Media Limited, trading as UKTV, is a British multi-channel broadcaster, which, since 2019, has been wholly owned by BBC Studios, a commercial subsidiary of the BBC. It was formed on 1 November 1992 through a joint venture between the BBC and Thames Television. It is one of the United Kingdom's largest television companies.
Sky Open is a New Zealand free-to-air television network. It airs a varied mix of programming, largely imported from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Tiny Pop is a soon to be defunct British free-to-air children's television channel in the United Kingdom, owned by Narrative Entertainment UK Limited. Broadcast on many of the major digital television platforms in the UK, Tiny Pop, which was launched on 8 September 2003 as Pop Plus, and shows, its target audience is children aged 7 and under. The station broadcasts principally animated content sourced from various distributors.
EE TV is a subscription IPTV service offered by BT; a division of United Kingdom telecommunications company BT Group, and was originally launched as BT Vision in December 2006. As of the end of June 2019, BT TV had 1.9 million customers.
Virgin TV is a digital pay cable television service in the United Kingdom, owned by Liberty Global (50%) and Telefónica (50%) after the merger its UK businesses to form Virgin Media O2. Its origins date from NTL and Telewest, formerly two of the UK's largest cable operators, which merged on 6 March 2006. All NTL:Telewest services were rebranded as Virgin Media in February 2007. Since the acquisition of Smallworld Cable in 2014, Virgin is the sole national cable TV provider in Great Britain. Currently about 51% of UK households have access to Virgin's network, which is independent from BT's Openreach network.
On Demand was the brand name of a range of video on demand services from Sky UK designed to compete with rival companies such as Virgin TV or EE TV as well as internet television services such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix.
4Music is a British music television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation that launched on 15 August 2008.
Channel 5 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel 5 Broadcasting Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Paramount Global's UK and Australia division. It was launched in 1997 to provide a fifth national terrestrial channel in the United Kingdom.
This is a timeline of the history of Sky Television.
Sky Living was a British pay television channel owned and operated by Sky. The channel's programming was aimed mainly at women and young adults. It originally launched as UK Living.
HGTV (formerly Home) is a British free-to-air television channel interior home and garden-orientated lifestyle television channel broadcasting in the United Kingdom and Ireland, currently owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The channel originally launched on 1 November 1997 as UK Style and then was rebranded to Home on 30 April 2009 and was rebranded to its current form on 21 January 2020. HGTV is broadcast 24 hours a day on Sky and TVPlayer. UK Style was transmitted by terrestrial provider ITV Digital 24 hours a day until the company's collapse in 2002. After a slight rebrand to UKTV Style, the channel made a return to terrestrial screens for a time in the mid-2000s as part of the now-defunct Top Up TV system. Home became available as a free-to-air linear service on Freeview from 1 March 2016.
