Discovery Health Channel (DHC) was a U.S. cable television specialty channel dedicated to television programming that highlighted various aspects of health and wellness. Launched on August 2, 1999, the network was a media property of Discovery Communications Inc., the parent company of other popular cable TV networks such as Discovery Channel, TLC, and Animal Planet.
A version of DHC was set up in Canada as well; Discovery Health Canada was a joint venture between Canadian media giant CW Media and Discovery Communications Inc; it evolved into Twist TV on November 2, 2010. Another version of the channel in the United Kingdom has since been renamed Discovery Home & Health.
In the beginning, DHC started out rerunning material from other Discovery Communications entities, most notably the medical-based reality show programming from TLC. As the network matured, it began producing its own programming in the reality show genre, mostly dealing with babies (Babies: Special Delivery, Birth Day), bodies (Plastic Surgery: Before and After, National Body Challenge), and blood (The Critical Hour, Dr. G: Medical Examiner). DHC also shows episodes of the CBS medical drama series Chicago Hope on a semi-regular basis.
DHC won its first Daytime Emmy in 2004 for its original series about adoptive families, Adoption Stories. Most of DHC's fitness-related programming has since been spun off to its sister network FitTV, though some of it remains, such as the annual National Body Challenge series.
In November 2009, it was announced that Discovery Health Channel would become defunct and be replaced with a new network, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, at 12:00 am Eastern/Pacific (11:00 pm Central) on January 1, 2011.
Discovery Health returned as a new cable channel on February 1, 2011 as a result of a merger with FitTV to create Discovery Fit & Health.
Read more about Discovery Health Channel: OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network
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