The Comedy Channel

The Comedy Channel was a short-lived United Kingdom subscription television channel during the early 1990s.

The channel launched soon after the merger of Sky Television plc and British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB). The merged company, British Sky Broadcasting, brought together comedy programming from its existing libraries - Sky having an archive of US imports including Three's Company, I Love Lucy, Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies and Seinfeld, and BSB having obtained rights to a number of BBC sitcoms such as Dad's Army and The Goodies.

The Comedy Channel existed in the days before the basic "Sky Multichannels" subscription package, so was made available as a premium service to subscribers of either Sky Movies or The Movie Channel.

The channel eventually lost the broadcast rights to the BBC shows following the expiry of the contract between the BBC and former BSB. Eventually the channel closed on 30 September 1992, to be replaced by a "classic movies" channel, Sky Movies Gold.

Similar Channels
Although no relation to Sky's Comedy Channel, other channels went on to show similar programmes or adopt an all-comedy theme. Later the same year, UKTV, a joint venture between the BBC and Thames Television, launched UK Gold, devoted to "Classic British Television". As well as a range of drama, soap and children's programmes, many of the same BBC comedy shows were screened, supplemented with ITV comedies including Thames' George and Mildred, Man About The House, and so on. Some years later, the unrelated Paramount Channel rebranded itself as Paramount Comedy Channel, discontinuing its drama and entertainment programming to concentrate solely on largely American comedy.