UKTV Gold

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(Redirected from UK Gold)

Template:Infobox TV channel UKTV Gold, known as UK Gold until March 8 2004, is a British television channel, launched on November 1, 1992, currently available on Sky satellite, cable, and terrestrial subscription via Top Up TV. It is not available on standard Freeview boxes, however, despite the fact that many of its programmes were produced by the BBC.

It was also available through terrestrial prior to May 2002 on ITV Digital channel 32 and broadcast 24 hours a day. It also featured on the Xtraview pay-per-view system on weekdays between 7pm and 9pm. However, this service has since been discontinued.

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History

The channel launched on November 1, 1992 (coincidentally, the day before Channel 4's 10th birthday) as a joint venture between Thames Television and the BBC to show reruns of their 'classic' archive programming (UKTV Gold and its sister stations (see below) are now part of the UKTV network, owned jointly by Flextech and the BBC).

The channel's major drawbacks in its early years were the insensitive placement of commercial breaks in BBC shows, and the heavy-handed editing of BBC programmes to fit commercial timeslots. The channel joined Sky's basic subscription package in 1993.

Initially broadcast on an analogue transponder from a SES Astra satellite at 19.2°E which was not primarily intended for UK reception, the channel used to be notorious for being marred with 'sparklies' in large parts of the UK.

UK Gold's success led to the creation of UKTV, still part-owned by the BBC, which operates several channels showing different types of archive programming. These included UK Style (home and lifestyle), UK Drama, UK Play/PlayUK (closed down), UK Horizons and UK History, as well as the time-shifted UKTV Gold +1, and UK Gold Classics, soon renamed to UK Gold 2. UK Gold 2 originally screened morning programmes from UK Gold time-shifted to the evening of the same day, but was relaunched with a completely new programme lineup and renamed UKG² on November 12, 2003. Another channel, UK Living, was renamed LivingTV when it broke away from the joint BBC-Flextech ownership (now purely Flextech).

On March 8, 2004 all of the UKTV channels changed their prefixes from UK to UKTV, and UK Horizons was split into two channels - UKTV Documentary and UKTV People.

On November 1 2004 the time-shifted UKTV G2 +1 was launched.

The BBC still cuts programmes (mainly documentaries) for commercial timing on the UKTV's factual channels, but programmes on UKTV Gold, UKTV Gold +1, UKTV G2 and UKTV Drama are now shown apparently uncut, often in longer slots. Most half-hour BBC sitcoms are shown in 40-minute slots.

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