The Comedy Channel (UK)

The Comedy Channel was a United Kingdom subscription television channel during the early 1990s.

The channel launched soon after the merger of Sky Television plc and British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB). The merged company, British Sky Broadcasting, brought together comedy programming from its existing libraries - Sky having an archive of US imports including "Three's Company", "I Love Lucy", "Green Acres", "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Seinfeld", and BSB having obtained rights to a number of BBC sitcoms such as "Dad's Army" and "The Goodies".

The Comedy Channel existed in the days before the basic "Sky Multichannels" subscription package, so was made available as a premium service to subscribers of either Sky Movies or The Movie Channel.

The channel eventually lost the broadcast rights to the BBC shows because they were earmarked for the new UK Gold channel. As a result its audience figures declined and it closed a few months later to be replaced by Sky Movies Gold, a channel dedicated to classic movies. Some years later, the completely unrelated Paramount Channel became Paramount Comedy Channel, eventually developing a much more varied programme line-up than its predecessor.