Until then, France had been the only region in Western Europe not reached by the Discovery Channel.

It initially reached 3.2 million subscribers via the CanalSat platform.

The channel faces competition from other documentary channels such as Planète+ and National Geographic.

In December 2016, Altice acquired an exclusivity agreement with NBCUniversal and Discovery Networks.

[3][4] Discovery Channel and Science were removed from Canal on 17 January 2017, and French versions of Investigation Discovery and Discovery Family were launched exclusively on SFR.