History
Before being taken over by the BBC, the channel was known as The Parliamentary Channel, at first operated by United Artists Cable and funded by a consortium of British cable operators. The Parliamentary Channel launched as a cable-exclusive channel in 1992. The channel was purchased by the BBC in 1998, retitled 'BBC Parliament', and relaunched under the new name on 23 September 1998. It now broadcasts on cable, satellite, and Freeview.
The channel ran as an audio service via DAB from launch until 14 November 2000.
Due to capacity limitations on the Digital Terrestrial Television platform, now known as Freeview, from launch until 30 October 2002, the channel ran as "audio only". Then on Freeview from October 2002 until 13 November 2006 the channel was only able to broadcast a quarter-screen picture. After receiving "thousands of angry and perplexed e-mails and letters", not to mention questions asked by MPs in the House itself, the BBC eventually found the bandwidth to make the channel full-screen.
Until 2008, BBC Parliament was unique amongst the BBC channels in being broadcast using non-BBC facilities - with ITV's Millbank Studios, based in Westminster, supplying the engineering and playout facilities (CBeebies became the second such channel when it moved live presentation to Teddington Studios in 2008). Production, editorial and journalism are, however, maintained by the BBC.
The channel's current identity was introduced on Monday, 20 April 2009 as part of the unifying of all of BBC News' output, the process which saw the BBC News Channel and BBC World News receive revamps in 2008. This replaced the channel's previous identity which was first introduced in 2002.
BBC Parliament was taken off the air during the 2012 Summer Olympics on Freeview in post-digital switchover areas to enable BBC Three to broadcast 24 hours a day. The BBC had done the same during the 2008 Olympic Games as it used the space to provide an additional BBC Red Button option for Freeview users.
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