Specialty Channel

A specialty channel can be a commercial broadcasting or non-commercial television channel which consists of television programming focused on a single genre, subject or targeted television market at a specific demographic.

The number of specialty channels has greatly increased during the 1990s and 2000s while the previously common concept of countries having just a few (national) TV stations addressing all interest groups and demographics became increasingly outmoded, as it already had been for some time in several countries. About 65% of today's satellite channels are specialty channels.

Types of specialty services may include, but by no means are limited to:

  • Children's interest channels
  • Documentary channels
  • adult channels
  • Men's interest channels
  • Movie channels
  • Music channels
  • News channels
  • Public affairs (broadcasting)
  • Public, educational, and government access
  • Quiz channels
  • Shopping channels
  • Sports channels
  • Religious broadcasting
  • Women's interest channels

(These categories are provided for convenience and do not necessarily represent industry-accepted or otherwise legally-binding names or categories for these types of services.)

Some specialty channels may not be free-to-air and/or may not be available through conventional broadcast television. Pay TV providers in particular often produce own specialty channels exclusively for their own network.

Read more about Specialty Channel:  Canadian Specialty Channels

Famous quotes containing the words specialty and/or channel:

    Women’s battle for financial equality has barely been joined, much less won. Society still traditionally assigns to woman the role of money-handler rather than money-maker, and our assigned specialty is far more likely to be home economics than financial economics.
    Paula Nelson (b. 1945)

    Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)