BBC Entertainment
Encyclopedia
BBC Entertainment is an international television channel showcasing comedy, drama, light entertainment
Light entertainment
Light entertainment is a term used to describe a broad range of usually televisual performances. These include comedies, variety shows, quiz/game shows, sketch shows and people/surprise shows.-Light entertainment in Britain:...

 and children's programming from the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 and other UK production houses. The replacement for BBC Prime
BBC Prime
BBC Prime was the BBC's general entertainment TV channel in Europe and the Middle East from 30 January 1995 until 11 November 2009, when it was replaced by BBC Entertainment.-Launch:...

, it is wholly owned by BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in 1995. In the year to 31 March 2010 it made a profit of £145m on a turnover of £1.074bn. The company had made a profit of £106m...

.

Launch dates

The channel was launched in October 2006, replacing BBC Prime
BBC Prime
BBC Prime was the BBC's general entertainment TV channel in Europe and the Middle East from 30 January 1995 until 11 November 2009, when it was replaced by BBC Entertainment.-Launch:...

 in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

n markets such as Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

 and South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

. In December 2006, BBC Entertainment launched on the Astro platform in Malaysia. The channel launched in India in May 2007 on the Tata Sky
Tata Sky
TATA Sky is a direct broadcast satellite television provider in India, using MPEG-2 digital compression technology, transmitting using INSAT 4A at 83.0°E....

 platform and on India online Broadband Pvt Ltd.

The channel launched in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, on Cyfrowy Polsat
Cyfrowy Polsat
Cyfrowy Polsat is a Polish DTH platform. It was launched on December 5, 1999 and is owned by Cyfrowy Polsat S.A. It is the fourth largest digital platform in Europe and the largest in Central and Eastern Europe. Cyfrowy Polsat have 3,47 million subscribes.Cyfrowy Polsat S.A...

, in December 2007, and replaced BBC Prime on DStv
DStv
DStv is MultiChoice's multi-channel digital satellite TV service in Africa, launched in 1995. It operates from two satellites over Africa, broadcasting on Ku band via Eutelsat W7 and Intelsat 7 , which only requires a small satellite dish...

 in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...

 on September 1, 2008. It launched in the Nordic countries
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...

 in November 2008, when it replaced BBC Prime on Canal Digital
Canal Digital
Canal Digital is a Scandinavian television distributor and internet service provider that was founded in March 1997 as a joint venture between the French pay-TV company Canal+ and the Norwegian telecommunications operator Telenor...

, Com Hem
Com Hem
Com Hem AB of Sweden, supplies triple play services that include cable tv, digital television, broadband, telephony and HDTV.Founded in 1983 as Televerket Kabel-TV as part of the former state-owned Televerket, the company has been successively named Svenska Kabel-TV AB and Telia InfoMedia...

, Telia Digital-TV
Telia Digital-tv
Telia Digital-tv is an IPTV distribution platform in Sweden owned by TeliaSonera. It was launched in January 2005 from a few locations, soon expanding into other locations.In September 2007, Telia announced that the platform had 200,000 subscribers....

 and FastTV. It was also launched in Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 on the SKY México
SKY México
SKY México is a company that operates a subscription television service in the Mexico, Central America, Dominican Republic area. It produces TV content, and owns several TV channels...

 digital satellite platform in August 2008 in a deal with Televisa
Televisa
Televisa is a Mexican multimedia conglomerate, the largest mass media company in Latin America and in the Spanish-speaking world. It is a major international entertainment business, with much of its programming airing in the United States on Univision, with which it has an exclusive contract...

, and it has since extended to other Central and South American countries.

The channel replaced BBC Prime in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 in November 2009. In Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, BBC Entertainment is carried alongside BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

 and BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...

, on the Telenet
Telenet (Belgium)
Telenet Group is the largest provider of broadband cable services in Belgium. Its business comprises the provision of analog and digital cable television, high speed internet and fixed and mobile telephony services, primarily to residential customers in Flanders and Brussels...

, Ziggo
Ziggo
Ziggo is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, providing cable television , broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers....

, and Naxoo
Naxoo
Naxoo is a Switzerland-based cable television company and is owned by 022 Télégenève.Launched in Geneva in 1986, offers a mix of Swiss and foreign analogue or digital tv and radio channels .- Generalist :1 - TSR 12 - TSR 23 - Léman Bleu4 - TF15 - France 26 - France...

 cable
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

 networks.

On 1 December 2009, Astro dropped the channel and replaced it with the Biography Channel. On 1 March 2010 in Italy Sky Italia
Sky Italia
Sky Italia S.r.l. is an Italian digital satellite television platform owned by News Corporation launched on 1 August 2003, when the former platforms TELE+ and Stream TV merged together...

 also dropped the channel.
In 2010 Kabel Deutschland
Kabel Deutschland
-Company:Kabel Deutschland operates in 13 of the 16 states . In 2006, of the 15.4 million households passed by their cable the company served 9.6 million, however only one third of these are direct customers of Kabel Deutschland, since especially in large apartment complexes the in-house cable...

 (Germany) made it a pay-TV channel.

See also

  • BBC World News
  • BBC Knowledge
    BBC Knowledge (Worldwide)
    BBC Knowledge is an international television channel showcasing factual and non-fiction entertainment programming from the BBC and independent UK production houses. Wholly owned by BBC Worldwide, it is not related to the previous channel known as BBC Knowledge, an early digital channel which closed...

  • BBC Lifestyle
    BBC Lifestyle
    BBC Lifestyle is an international television channel. The channel provides six key programming strands: Food, Home & Design, Fashion & Style, Health, Parenting, and Personal Development.-Launch dates:...

  • CBeebies
    CBeebies
    CBeebies is the brand used by the BBC for programming aimed at children 6 years and under. It is used as a themed strand in the UK on terrestrial television, as a separate free-to-air domestic British channel and used for international varients supported by advertising, subscription or both...

  • BBC HD
    BBC HD
    BBC HD is a high-definition television network provided by the BBC. The service was initially run as a trial from 15 May 2006 until becoming a full service on 1 December 2007...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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