Discovery Channel (French TV channel)

Discovery Channel

Country	United Kingdom
Broadcast area	France Switzerland Monaco Belgium Morocco Lebanon Tunisia Mauritius Madagascar Sub-Saharan Africa New Caledonia
Programming
Language(s)	French
Picture format	16:9 1080i (HDTV)
Ownership
Owner	Warner Bros. Discovery EMEA
Sister channels	Discovery Science France Discovery Investigation
History
Launched	1 August 2004 (2004-08-01)
Links
Website	discoverychannel.fr

Discovery Channel is a French pay television channel that was launched on 1 September 2004. Until then, France had been the only region in Western Europe not reached by the Discovery Channel. It initially reached 3.2 million subscribers via the CanalSat platform. On 31 March 2009, the channel adopted the new Discovery Channel logo and look.

The channel faces competition from other documentary channels such as Planète+ and National Geographic.

In December 2016, Altice acquired an exclusivity agreement with NBCUniversal and Discovery Networks. Discovery Channel and Science were removed from Canal on 17 January 2017, and French versions of Investigation Discovery and Discovery Family were launched exclusively on SFR.

Programming

Programs are mostly taken from the United Kingdom and the United States and include:

• American Chopper
• Biker Build-Off (Duels de bikers)
• Building the Future (Construire l'avenir)
• Eyewitness (Temoin sur le vif)
• How Do They Do It? (Comment ça marche ?)
• Long Way Round (L'echappee belle)
• Megastructures (Mega constructions)
• MythBusters (Myth busters)
• Really Big Things (Monstres Mecaniques)
• Smash Lab (Crash Lab)
• Time Warp
• Top Gear

Language localisation

The channel is known for its abysmal language localisation and voice-over translation. Voice over translation is culturally associated to past midnight shopping programs and unlike most of the CanalSat's channels, it didn't offer the original audio of the programs as an option.