BBC Parliament

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BBC Parliament

Launched	23 September 1998
Owned by	BBC
Audience share	Near but above 0% (February 2007, [1])
Formerly called	The Parliamentary Channel
Sister channel(s)	BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News 24, CBBC Channel, CBeebies
Website	www.bbc.co.uk/bbcparliament
Availability
Terrestrial
Freeview	Channel 81
Satellite
Sky Digital	Channel 504
Astra 2A	11954 H / 27500 / 2/3
Cable
Virgin Media	Channel 612

The BBC Parliament ident

BBC Parliament is a British television channel from the BBC. It broadcasts live and recorded coverage of the British House of Commons and House of Lords, Select Committees, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, and occasionally from the General Synod of the Church of England. It also rebroadcasts some material (mostly discussion shows) from the equivalent US channel, C-SPAN. Its nightly political programme is known as 'The Record'.

Before being taken over by the BBC, the channel was run by Flextech and it was then known as The Parliamentary Channel, available only on cable. It relaunched as its current state on 23 September 1998.

It broadcasts on digital cable, satellite, and Freeview. It used to have wide availability on analogue cable networks, but has gradually declined.

Until 13 November 2006, the channel used to only be broadcast as a quarter-screen picture on Freeview, due to capcity limitations on the Digital Terrestrial Television platform. However, after receiving "thousands of angry and perplexed e-mails and letters"[2], the BBC found the bandwidth to make the channel full-screen[3].

It is unique amongst the BBC channels in being entirely produced by an independent company, Millbank Studios, based in Millbank. Its 2002 relaunch has introduced an identity more in line with the BBC's corporate image, the channel now featuring music and graphics produced by BBC News.

Since 2002, the channel has frequently shown (almost) complete recordings of BBC general election coverage from a given year, from the 1955 election, the first British election programme to be telerecorded, to the 2005 election. Some have been broadcast on the anniversary of their original transmissions.