The original partners behind the channel were the BBC's commercial arm BBC Enterprises and the outgoing ITV contractor Thames Television, although before the launch the American cable operator Cox Enterprises stepped in and took a majority share, 65 percent, in exchange for underwriting the costs of launching the channel.

In a sense, UK Gold succeeded British Satellite Broadcasting's Galaxy channel that had originally held these rights from the BBC.

A second joint-venture satellite channel, called UK Living, began broadcasting on 1 September 1993 with programming targeted at female viewers.

[4] In 1996, it started discussions about increasing its stake to gain full control; at that point Flextech held 27% with Cox (38%), BBC (20%) and Pearson (15%).

[8][failed verification] During 1996, Flextech and the BBC held talks about a partnership to launch a new range of channels under the name UKTV.

BSkyB would have sought a significant share in the planned channels, in exchange for agreeing to offer them to its 3.8 million direct-to-home satellite subscribers.

[citation needed] It was believed at the time that if it were spurned, BSkyB could develop competing channels before the Flextech-BBC launch, particularly arts and documentaries, as a spoiling tactic.

[10] Flextech wanted these channels to carry advertisements, but the BBC argued that BBC-branded services in the UK should not, as doing so would undermine the rationale of TV licensing.

On 11 June 2008, UKTV announced that it was beginning the process of rebranding its channels from generic, UKTV-prefixed names to individual and separate brands, after the successful launch of Dave.

[14] This resulted in the timeshift channel Dave ja vu broadcasting reduced hours of 02:00–04:00 on Freeview only to keep the EPG number available for future use.

On 15 August 2011, Virgin Media agreed to sell its 50% stake UKTV to Scripps Networks Interactive in a deal worth £339m.

Scripps paid £239m in cash, and about £100m to acquire the outstanding preferred stock and debt owed by UKTV to Virgin Media.

[18] As part of the deal, UKTV started streaming linear channels to BT Vision set-top boxes in late 2012.

[20] The UKTV logo re-design went live across the identities of their channel network and programmes on Tuesday, 26 March 2013 for its 21st birthday.

[26] The sale was part of a larger agreement between the two companies for international streaming rights to the BBC's natural history programming.

[citation needed] UKTV's move was similar to a solution suggested by PHD executive strategy director Louise Jones at 2003 Marketing Week TV United Conference, with a view to cleaning up breaks.

[35] The rebrand included the channel being available free-to-air on Freeview, replacing UKTV Bright Ideas which only averaged a 0.1% audience share.

UKTV said that this female skewing channel would be still targeted at a 25 to 44 age range but introduced a new logo for the free-to-air era[41] which included the letter W in a slanted rectangle.

The channel airs natural history documentaries such as Planet Earth although mid-2024 saw its output also start to cover other factual and reality programming.

Gold originally operated as a joint venture between Thames Television and BBC Enterprises to show reruns of their archive programming.

(Go On Laugh Daily) on the morning of 7 October 2008 as it transitioned exclusively to comedy programmes, with the entertainment programming moving to Watch (U&W).

(UKTV People +1) It was relaunched as Alibi on the morning of 7 October 2008 and is now fully focused on crime dramas which are mainly taken from the BBC and ITV archives.

Launching on iOS in August,[45] on PC, YouView and Virgin Media in November,[46] on Android devices in February 2015[47] and on Freesat in September 2018.

The closure of ITV Digital led to the channel's viewership decreasing significantly, and its failure to compete with MTV also corresponded to its decline.

The main aim for the closure was to coincide of the rebranding of UKTV G2 as Dave, which would allow the channel to broadcast on Freeview.

It would also allow Dave's timeshift service to expand to 24 hours, which it wasn't able to do as UKTV G2, due to Bright Ideas sharing the same EPG bandwidth on Sky and Virgin Media.

The output of Blighty was some factual programming of a lighter nature, such as Top Gear and docusoaps like Airport, and from February 2009 following its rebranding, "British" shows like "My Brilliant Britain".

The Good Food website originally devised and launched by Ian Fenn and Ally Branley provides a number of services including information on programmes shown on the channel, recipes, message boards, and a wine club.

Really focuses entirely on medical crime, real life and lifestyle shows and was another offshoot from UKTV Style.

Even though Create and Craft still had a shopping slot early on in the morning on Channel 23, the rest of the schedule was made up of imports and re-runs of shows like The Bold and The Beautiful.