The Landscape Channel was a British television channel set up by Nick Austin, co-founder of the Beggars Banquet record label, to showcase ambient videos set to classical and modern instrumental music.[1]
It began airing as an overnight programming block on Sky Channel in 1988 and ran until 1989.[2] In 1990, Landscape provided Channel 4 with 200 hours of morning programming as The Art of Landscape.[3] This precipitated Landscape becoming a dedicated UK cable channel in 1991 on Windsor Television before expanding onto other UK cable networks, and also into Europe in 1993.[2]
On 1 January 2001, Landscape moved to Internet connected server distribution allowing cable television providers to broadcast from local servers refreshed via the Internet, rather than via traditional, more expensive, satellite distribution.[4] Due to a lack of funding, the channel's management was restructured between 2003 and 2007 although it continued to broadcast on the Dutch CAI Westland service.[2]
The channel returned to Sky as a programming block on Friendly TV on 20 October 2003[5] and the Information TV range of channels in August 2010.[6][7]
Both LandscapeTV.com and LandscapeHD.com defaulted to the former but both domains expired in mid-2014 and are now up for sale through Heart Internet.
In 2005, The Landscape Channel began to offer high-definition programming on Landscape HD via their internet distribution service, which was upgraded in 2011 to offer 1080p video.[8]
