[1] As of January 2022, the channel had a typical weekly peak of approximately 120,000 viewers, during Prime Minister's Questions,[2] representing a monthly reach of 5.41% of UK TV households and 0.06% overall share.

[3] In 1991, United Artists Programming initiated a trial project to provide highlights of debates from Parliament in a programme called Yesterday in the Commons to cable networks across the UK.

[4] The trial was deemed to be a success and this led to United Artists Cable launching a full time service, The Parliamentary Channel on 13 January 1992, to provide live and recorded coverage of the British Parliament.

This followed the launch three years earlier of a Digital Audio Broadcasting, from the Crystal Palace transmitting station, which had offered is a relay of events in Parliament.

After receiving "thousands of angry and perplexed emails and letters",[7] not to mention questions asked by MPs in the House itself, the BBC eventually found the bandwidth to make the channel full-screen.

BBC Parliament HD has been confirmed as launching from 20 October 2021 and rolling out across various platforms at different times right up to the end of 2022, the standard definition service will continue on Freeview.

This saw the channel end its mostly live coverage of party conferences, its broadcasts of the BBC's national political shows, its Sunday lunchtime simulcast of C-SPAN and repeat of Question Time all finished, as did all archive programming.

Thus, when taken together with both live and recorded coverage from the other bodies it covers, BBC Parliament's schedule is dominated by direct broadcasts of the legislative and political institutions, whether they be plenary, quasi-plenary (such as Westminster Hall), or in committees that affect British public life.

In the event of one of the devolved nations producing their own results programme on election night, normally the first Thursday in May, BBC Parliament will usually broadcast this telecast to the whole of the United Kingdom.

From 2002 until 2019 BBC Parliament frequently broadcast programmes that have a historical or broader social significance, often encompassing major events both in the United Kingdom and in the world.

Programmes in this area have been diverse in character, such as the channel's first archive rerun, which was to celebrate the Golden Jubilee in June 2002 when BBC Parliament reran the coronation coverage.

All special programming ended in 2020 due to cutbacks at the channel which saw it revert to schedule which only featured live and delayed coverage of the UK's Parliamentary bodies.

[30] The 50th anniversary of the Suez Crisis was commemorated in November 2006, with writer and broadcaster Anthony Howard introducing a special series of programmes on the channel.

This included television broadcasts by the then-prime minister Anthony Eden and the then-Labour Leader of the Opposition Hugh Gaitskell, alongside a new documentary called Suez in Parliament: a Fine Hullabaloo.

Programming included the BBC's original television news bulletins and reports from the period, alongside editions of Newsnight and excerpts of debates from Question Time.

On 26 May 2008, Joan Bakewell introduced an archive evening called Permissive Night which examined the liberalising social reform legislation passed by Parliament in the late 1960s.

[38] The anniversary of the BBC's own Question Time series was marked on 25 September 2009 by re-broadcasting the first edition of the topical discussion programme from 30 years earlier.

Robin Day presented alongside the inaugural panel of Michael Foot MP, Teddy Taylor, Edna O'Brien and Archbishop Derek Worlock.

This included television election broadcasts by the prime minister Harold Macmillan, Leader of the Opposition Hugh Gaitskell and Labour's Tony Benn; an edition of Tonight; and other BBC current affairs programmes.

On Thursday 14 February, BBC Parliament broadcast an evening of selected archive programmes under the title Harold Wilson Night.

On Monday 18 March, BBC Parliament showed four hours of the House of Commons debate about whether to commit British troops to the invasion of Iraq.

On Monday 8 April, BBC Parliament broadcast an evening of archive programming to mark the death of Margaret Thatcher, the first female to serve as prime minister.

On Saturday 19 October, BBC Parliament marked the 50th anniversary of the appointment of Alec Douglas-Home as prime minister following the resignation of Harold Macmillan.

Titled Home at the Top the sequence included the edition of Panorama broadcast on the night of the hand-over and an address to the nation by the new prime minister.

On Sunday 26 July, BBC Parliament showed an evening of programmes to mark the 50th anniversary of Ted Heath becoming the leader of the Conservative Party.

The programmes were introduced by Norman Tebbit and the items shown included her 1980 speech to the Conservative Party Conference, news reports about vital events in her time as prime minister and two editions of Panorama.