Blighty is a television channel broadcasting in the United Kingdom as part of the UKTV network of channels. The channel originally launched on 8 March 2004 and relaunched in its current format on 17 February 2009. The channel is only available on Sky, TalkTalk TV and Virgin Media, and is not available on the digital terrestrial service Freeview.
The channel launched on 8 March 2004 as UKTV People, showing repeats of factual programming of a lighter nature, based on the people of the world with programmes such as Top Gear and the docusoap Airport. Much of this programming had come from the former channel UK Horizons, which had closed down the day before. The channel itself, along with UKTV Documentary, replaced this channel formally.
On 9 October 2008, UKTV announced plans to rebrand UKTV People and UKTV Documentary in early 2009. The news came just two days after UKTV's entertainment channels were rebranded to Watch, Gold and Alibi. They announced that UKTV People would be rebranded as Blighty and this rebrand took place on 17 February 2009. As part of the rebrand, some programmes were transferred to channels such as Dave, while the channel acquired some other programmes looking at British life.
Blighty is a British English slang term for Britain, deriving from the Hindustani word vilāyatī (विलायती) (pronounced bilāti in many Indian dialects and languages), from Persian vilayet and ultimately from Arabic wilayah, originally meaning something like "province". In India the term came to refer to Europe, and more specifically Britain.
The term was more common in the latter days of the British Raj, and is now more commonly used as a term of endearment by the expatriate British community or those on holiday to refer to home.
In their 1886 Anglo-Indian dictionary, Hobson-Jobson, Sir Henry Yule and Arthur C. Burnell explained that the word came to be used in British India for several things the British had brought into the country, such as the tomato (bilayati baingan, whose literal translation is "foreign aubergine") and soda water, which was commonly called bilayati pani ("foreign water").
During World War I, "Dear Old Blighty" was a common sentimental reference, suggesting a longing for home by soldiers in the trenches. The term was particularly used by World War I poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. During that war, a Blighty wound — a wound serious enough to require recuperation away from the trenches but not serious enough to kill or maim the victim—was hoped for by many, and sometimes self-inflicted.
A television channel is a physical or virtual channel over which a television station or television network is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the broadcast or cable band of 54 to 60 MHz, with carrier frequencies of 55.25 MHz for NTSC analog video (VSB) and 59.75 MHz for analog audio (FM), or 55.31 MHz for digital ATSC (8VSB). Channels may be shared by many different television stations or cable-distributed channels depending on the location and service provider.
Depending on the multinational bandplan for a given region, analog television channels are typically 6, 7, or 8 MHz in bandwidth, and therefore television channel frequencies vary as well. Channel numbering is also different. Digital television channels are the same for legacy reasons, however through multiplexing, each physical radio frequency (RF) channel can carry several digital subchannels. On satellites, each transponder normally carries one channel, however small, independent channels can be used on each transponder, with some loss of bandwidth due to the need for guard bands between unrelated transmissions. ISDB, used in Japan and Brazil, has a similar segmented mode.
Channel, Channels, and similar terms may refer to:
Jon Snow (born 28 September 1947) is an English journalist and presenter, currently employed by ITN. He is best known for presenting Channel 4 News.
He was Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University from 2001 to 2008.
Snow was born in Ardingly, Sussex. He is the son of schoolmaster and Bishop of Whitby, George D'Oyly Snow, grandson of First World War general Thomas D'Oyly Snow (about whom he writes in his Foreword to Ronald Skirth's war memoir The Reluctant Tommy), and cousin of retired BBC television news presenter Peter Snow.
Snow was educated at independent school, Ardingly College, where his father was headmaster. He later attended the independent St Edward's School in Oxford. At age 18 he was for a year a VSO volunteer teaching in northern Uganda.
After mixed success in his first attempt to pass his A level qualifications he moved to the Yorkshire Coast College, Scarborough, where he later obtained the necessary qualifications to gain a place studying law at the University of Liverpool. However, he did not complete the degree, being rusticated for his part in a student protest. However he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Liverpool University in 2011.
I want my story straight
But all the others bend
From wondrous to strange
To beauty at the end
I move along
A swaying wire
Your talking drums
A perfect choir to my disarray
In demonstration our failures all aside We can burn this whole fucking system down And drive the bastards out Spit in the cynic's eye Has passion all run dry Expression of anger Testify... fight... Frustration as a catalyst Our lifesblood and identity Channel anger into a righteous act Deconstruction of the ruling class The past is dead pressing forward To what we can become Incarnation of true revolution The foundations have become our own Channel rage Channel anger Channel hate Into change By our hands.