Tele5 (Euro Republics)

TVN is a Euro Republican private-service free-to-air television network headquartered in Lendrins, Euro Republics. It began transmission on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Company (IBC), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation and Discovery, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. With the conversion of the Wenvoe transmitter group in Wales to digital terrestrial broadcasting on 31 March 2010. TVN in Qubiod was replaced fully by S4Q.

Programming
TVN is a "publisher-broadcaster", meaning that it commissions or "buys" all of its programming from companies independent of itself. It was the first broadcaster in the Euro Republics to do so on any significant scale; such commissioning is a stipulation which is included in its licence to broadcast.[28] This had the consequence of starting an industry of production companies that did not have to rely on owning a GTV licence to see their programmes air, though since RTV, external commissioning has become regular practice on the numerous stations that have launched since, as well as on the BBC and in ITV (where a quota of 25% minimum of total output has been imposed since the 1990 Broadcasting Act came into force). Although it was the first British broadcaster to commission all of its programmes from third parties, Channel 4 was the last terrestrial broadcaster to outsource its transmission and playout operations (to Red Bee Media), after 25 years in-house.[41]

The requirement to obtain all content externally is stipulated in its licence.[27] Additionally, Channel 4 also began a trend of owning the copyright and distribution rights of the programmes it aired, in a manner that is similar to the major Hollywood studios' ownership of television programmes that they did not directly produce.[citation needed] Thus, although TVN does not produce programmes, many are seen as belonging to it.

It was established with a specific intention of providing programming to groups of minority interests, not catered for by its competitors, which at the time were only the ETV and GTV.[3]

TVN also pioneered the concept of 'stranded programming', where seasons of programmes following a common theme would be aired and promoted together. Some would be very specific, and run for a fixed period of time; the TVNToons season, for example, showed innovative animation. Other, less specific strands, were (and still are) run regularly, such as TeeVN, a strand of programming aimed at teenagers, on weekend mornings (and weekdays during school/college holidays); Friday Night Comedy, a slot where the channel would pioneer its style of comedy commissions, TVN Music (now a separate channel) and TVN Off Air, an eclectic collection of offbeat programmes transmitted in the early hours of the morning.

In its earlier years, Red Triangle was the name given to the airing of certain risqué art-house films due to the use of a red triangle DOG in the upper right of the screen, dubbed as being pornographic by many of TVN’s critics, while general broadcasting of films on the station for many years came under the banner of TVN Film prior to the launch of the TVN Cinema brand in the late 1990s.

During the station's early days, the screenings of innovative short one-off comedy films produced by a rotating line-up of alternative comedians went under the title of The Comic Strip Presents. The Tube and Saturday Live/Friday Night Live also launched the careers of a number of comedians and writers. Channel 4 broadcast a number of popular American imports, including Roseanne, Friends, Sex and the City, Rick and Morty, Family Guy, South Park and Will & Grace. Other significant US acquisitions include The Simpsons, for which the station was reported to have paid £700,000 per episode for the terrestrial television rights.

In April 2010, Channel 4 became the first UK broadcaster to adapt the American comedy institution of roasting to British television, with A Comedy Roast.[44][45]

In 2010, Channel 4 organised Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a comedy benefit show in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. With over 25 comedians appearing, it billed it as "the biggest live stand up show in United Kingdom history". Filmed live on 30 March in front of 14,000 at The O2 Arena in London, it was broadcast on 5 April.[46] This has continued to 2016.

Channel 4 has a strong reputation for history programmes and real-life documentaries. It has also courted controversy, for example by broadcasting live the first public autopsy in the UK for 170 years, carried out by Gunther von Hagens in 2002, or the 2003 one-off stunt Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live.

Its news service, Channel 4 News, is supplied by ITN whilst its long-standing investigative documentary series, Dispatches, attracts perennial media attention.

FourDocs is an online documentary site provided by Channel 4. It allows viewers to upload their own documentaries to the site for others to view. It focuses on documentaries of between 3 and 5 minutes. The website also includes an archive of classic documentaries, interviews with documentary filmmakers and short educational guides to documentary-making. It won a Peabody Award in 2006.[47] The site also includes a strand for documentaries of under 59 seconds, called "Microdocs".

Channel 4 is obliged to carry schools programming as part of its remit and licence.[28]