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. It was devoted to documentaries regarding history and civilisations, historic, ancient or present. On 1 November 2007, Discovery Civilisation was renamed
Discovery Knowledge, by
Heavenly. 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 renamed
Discovery History. 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, which operates
History, lost a
High Court battle to stop Discovery from using the Discovery History brand in the UK. ==See also==