British digital television channel
Television channel
Eden
is a British
premium television
channel broadcasting nature content with some factual entertainment programming in the United Kingdom and Ireland as part of the
UKTV
network of channels. The channel originally launched on 8 March 2004 and relaunched in its current format on 27 January 2009.
History
[
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The UKTV channels were all rebranded on 8 March 2004. At the same time, Eden was launched as
UKTV Documentary
, showing factual
documentaries
, mainly from the
BBC
archives, on a variety of subjects if not covered by another channel in the UKTV network, such as
Jacob Bronowski
's
The Ascent of Man
. Much of this programming had come from the former UKTV channel
UK Horizons
, which had closed down the day before and which the channel, and spun off a sister channel called
UKTV People
. UKTV Documentary occupied the same broadcasting slot as UK Horizons.
On 9 October 2008, UKTV announced plans to rebrand UKTV Documentary and UKTV People in early 2009.
[1]
The news came just two days after UKTV's entertainment channels were rebranded to
Watch
,
Gold
and
Alibi
. They announced that UKTV Documentary would be rebranded as
Eden
and this rebrand took place on 26 January 2009. As part of the rebrand, the channels programming output changed from all documentaries to primarily documentaries focusing on the natural environment. All other documentaries were transferred to
UKTV History
or
UKTV People
, depending on their subject matter.
Subsidiary channels
[
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Eden +1
[
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]
From launch, the channel has had a timeshift service, called
Eden +1
and
UKTV Documentary +1
before it. The service ran on
Sky
and
Virgin Media
and broadcast the channels schedule one hour later than usual. The timeshift was removed from Virgin Media in October 2008 to allow bandwidth for new channel
Watch
, however the time shift service was restored on 7 October 2011.
Eden HD
[
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]
Eden HD
launched on 4 October 2010 on Sky channel 559, running a
high-definition
simulcast
of the main channel.
[2]
As part of Virgin Media's deal to sell its share of UKTV, all five of UKTV's HD channels were added to Virgin's cable television service by 2012.
[3]
Eden HD was added to Virgin Media on 7 October 2011.
[4]
On 3 October 2016, Eden HD was added to BT.
[5]
On 2 October 2017, Eden HD was removed from the Sky lineup and replaced with
Gold HD
.
On-air identity
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]
The UKTV Documentary identity focused around scenes from the landscape of Britain. The ident would first feature a close up shot, for example of a person or a stone, before pulling back to reveal the bigger picture: such as a busy rail station or a stone circle. This was then overlaid with the UKTV Documentary logo, consisting of the UKTV logo on top, and an upper case 'DOCUMENTARY' tag below, aligned to the left of the screen. Alongside the idents, the channel had a
Digital on-screen graphic
(DOG) of the same design and also featured a generic UKTV design for all promotions for the channel. The channels house colour was a blue, similar in shade to
Azure
, and would feature in numerous changing shades on the end boards of promotions.
The current Eden identity features explorers in an unknown environment, such as the deep
jungle
or the
Antarctic
, before coming across a landscape, which the logo then forms onto.
Programming
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]
The programming used on the channel is mostly from the
BBC
archives, and are therefore edited to fit the time slot: an original broadcast for an hour-long programme on the BBC might be as much as 58 minutes long, while the same programme here might be 42 minutes long without the commercials. Eden is renowned for showing blue-chip natural history but has more recently moved into more scientific programmes while keeping the blue-chip, cinematic identity. Eden has also produced its own exclusive programming, with the most recent series
David Attenborough's Natural Curiosities
, produced by Humble Bee Films,
[6]
broadcasting from January 2013.
As of May 2024, Eden now showing the range of reality and history programming from
W
and
Yesterday
.
[7]
See also
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References
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External links
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