20th century The channel launched in 1996 under the name
Discovery Civilization Network: The World History and Geography Channel. It was one of four
digital cable companion networks; Discovery Travel & Living Network (now
Destination America), Discovery Science Network (now
Science Channel) and Discovery Kids (now
Discovery Family, which has been a joint venture with
Hasbro since 2010) were rolled out by Discovery Communications simultaneously in October 1996. Plans for the channel had surfaced in November 1994, when its working name was
Time Traveler.
21st century In April 2002,
The New York Times Company and Discovery Communications announced a joint venture to run the Discovery Civilization Channel. By then, it was available in 14 million households. The partnership aimed to complement the historical shows, with programming about current events and contemporary history. On March 25, 2003, the channel was rebranded as
Discovery Times, focusing more on the
culture of the United States, as well as other miscellaneous programming. The previous name was described as "a little off-message" by executives. In April 2006,
The New York Times sold its stake in Discovery Times back to Discovery Communications, ending its ownership in the channel. Despite the sale of the
Times stake in the channel, the "Times" was kept in the name until January 27, 2008 when the network was rebranded as Investigation Discovery (ID), shifting its programming focus on true crime documentaries. In 2016, owing to a growth in popularity in true crime among the demographic, ID was the second-highest-rated cable network among women 25–54. In 2018, ID was the sixth-highest-rated basic cable network in full-day viewership. On April 12, 2020, Investigation Discovery introduced a new logo, placing a greater focus on the "ID" initialism to make it better-suited for multi-platform use. In December 2022, the team responsible for ID also took over responsibility for
HLN, which became a sibling channel following the merger of Discovery, Inc. with
WarnerMedia to form
Warner Bros. Discovery earlier that year. That channel had gradually shifted to a similar true crime-focused format since the mid-2010s after having primarily been a rolling news sister channel to
CNN, dropping its last original news programs at the same time as the management change, and had already begun airing repeats of ID programming such as
Hometown Homicide shortly after the WBD merger. ==Programming==