On 19 August 1998, Discovery announced they would launch several new digital channels to coincide with the launch of Sky Digital platform, one of which would be Discovery Civilisation Channel, which launched on 1 October 1998.[1] It was devoted to documentaries regarding history and civilisations, historic, ancient or present.
On 1 November 2007, Discovery Civilisation was re-branded as Discovery Knowledge,[2] by Heavenly.[3] The new channel was still focused on history and natural history, but the schedule now included programming on engineering, crime and technology.
After just over three years, on 7 November 2010, Discovery Knowledge was rebranded as Discovery History.[4] The idea behind this rebranding was to take the channel's focus back to becoming "the only UK channel dedicated to factual history", to counter the fact that its competitors History and Yesterday had begun showing more reality and scripted programming, respectively.
In February 2013, A+E Networks, who operates History, lost a High Court battle to stop Discovery from using the Discovery History brand in the UK.[5]
