Home & Garden Television (HGTV)

HGTV (Home & Garden Television) is an American basic cable channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

The network primarily broadcasts reality programming related to home improvement and real estate. HGTV Dream Home is an annual event on the channel. Its former owner was the E. W. Scripps Company, who spun its cable networks off into an entirely new company. As of November 2023, HGTV is available to approximately 72,000,000 pay television households in the United States-down from its 2011 peak of 100,000,000 households.

History

Kenneth W. Lowe (then a radio executive with The E. W. Scripps Company and, subsequently, the chief executive officer of Scripps Networks Interactive) envisioned the concept of HGTV in 1992. With modest financial support from the E.W. Scripps corporate board, he purchased Cinetel, a small video production company in Knoxville, as the base and production hub of the new network. Lowe cofounded the channel with Susan Packard.

Cinetel became Scripps Productions, but it found producing more than thirty programs simultaneously daunting. The organization brought in former CBS television executive Ed Spray, who implemented a system of producing (nearly all) programming through independent production houses around the United States. Burton Jablin, as Vice President of Programming, set the tone and oversaw the production of the early series. About 90 percent of the channel's programming consisted of original productions at launch, with ten percent licensed and rerun from Canadian channels, PBS, and other sources.

Using local Scripps cable franchises (since divested), the Federal Communications Commission "must carry" provisions of Scripps medium-market television stations, and other small television operators to gain cable carriage, the channel launched on December 30, 1994. The major programming themes, unchanged since the beginning, were home building and remodeling, landscaping and gardening, decorating and design, and crafts and hobbies.

During its development, the channel was originally named the Home, Lawn, and Garden Channel. The name was later shortened and a logo was developed. The network debuted with a skeletal staff, but with gradual acceptance by other cable operators, it now reaches 94 million households in the United States and has either partner networks, or network interests, internationally elsewhere. It is now referred to simply as "HGTV"; the full name of the channel is de-emphasized.

In July 2008, the E.W. Scripps Company spun off the channel and the other Scripps cable channels and web-based properties into a separate company, Scripps Networks Interactive; E.W. Scripps broadcast television and newspaper properties remain as part of the original company.

In December 2011, the channel began broadcasting all of its programming in 16:9 aspect ratio format on its primary standard definition channel. This results in the appearance of black bars on the top and bottom of the screen on 4:3 aspect ratio televisions; its high-definition channel displays the channel's programming in its native aspect ratio. On March 6, 2018, Discovery Communications completed its merger with Scripps Networks Interactive and assumed control of HGTV, Food Network and Travel Channel.