Challenge is a British free-to-air television channel owned by Sky, a division of Comcast. The channel mostly transmits game shows from the UK and around the world, with some original productions. History The Family Channel The channel was originally launched Wednesday 1 September 1993 as The Family Channel, a British version of the American cable network of the same name, owned by U.S. firm International Family Entertainment, a spin-off of the Christian Broadcasting Network's cable network The Family Channel, and this channel was shared with Children's Channel. Earlier in the year, IFE had acquired the assets of the defunct ITV franchise TVS for US$68.5 million (which included the MTM Enterprises library, and The Maidstone Studios), it was launched the same day as the UK and Ireland version of Nickelodeon, another American-based channel. In June 1993, prior to its launch, IFE sold a 39% stake in the channel to Flextech. The Family Channel did produce some UK original programming, but heavily relied upon content from MTM and TVS's archives, and other U.S. imports. It was claimed that the channel produced more original series worldwide than any other cable or satellite network. In April 1996, IFE sold its remaining 61% share to Flextech, giving them full ownership of the venture and production studio in Maidstone. The deal did not include any of the programme archive which included many TVS game shows, such as Catchphrase and All Clued Up, but the channel did continually broadcast these series until 2000. Challenge TV (1997–2002) Flextech planned to relaunch the channel as The Challenge Channel during the autumn of 1996, with daytime targeted towards housewives, and evening and weekend programming focused on game shows. However, Flextech decided to delay the full relaunch of The Family Channel so it would not compete with the October 1996 launch of Granada Sky Broadcasting's suite of channels—which included the potential competitor Granada Good Life. Instead, The Family Channel began transitioning to the new brand by introducing a weekend game show strand known as Family Challenge Weekend. On Monday 3 February 1997, The Family Channel rebranded as Challenge TV, devoting the majority of its lineup to game shows. The channel was a primetime block from 17:00 to 00:30 with the overnight hours - 00:30 to 06:00 - branded as "Family Late", which continued to air its previous entertainment programming. Challenge and Family Late shared its channel slot with The Children's Channel