| U&Yesterday | |
| Owner: | BBC Studios |
| Parent: | UKTV |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Language: | English |
| Area: | United Kingdom and Ireland |
| Picture Format: | 1080i HDTV (downscaled to 576i for the SDTV feed) |
| Sister Channels: | Alibi U&Dave U&Drama Eden Gold U&W |
| Former Names: | |
| Replaced: | Play UK |
| Timeshift Service: | U&Yesterday +1 |
| Terr Serv 1: | Freeview |
| Terr Chan 1: | Channel 27 Channel 75 (+1) |
U&Yesterday is a British free-to-air television channel broadcasting in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It launched on 30 October 2002 as UK History and relaunched in its current format on 2 March 2009. It is available on satellite through Sky, Freesat and through the digital terrestrial provider Freeview. Hours on Freeview had previously been cut, with transmissions finishing at 6 pm, but were restored on 1 June 2010.
On 30 June 2002, UKTV announced the closure of Play UK at the end of the year, citing that the closure of ITV Digital was the reason for its demise.[1] On 13 September, UKTV announced the closure of the channel would be moved forward to the end of September, and that to prepare for the launch of Freeview, the bandwidth space would be replaced with a new channel - UK History.[2]
Play UK closed as planned at the end of September, and the following month on 30 October, the launch date for the Freeview platform itself, UK History launched, becoming an offshoot of UK Horizons with most of its factual and documentary programmes moving over; however, the launch of UK History allowed Horizons to broadcast more programmes in their schedule.
On 28 January 2004, a timeshift service - UK History +1 was launched on Sky Digital.[3] The channel broadcasts the UK History schedule one hour later than the main channel, but contains no special programming or branding, with the occasional exception of a different DOG. The channel launched on Telewest the following week on 4 February.[4] On 8 March 2004, the channel's "UK" prefix was changed to the full "UKTV" name, renaming the networks as UKTV History and UKTV History +1, as with the rest of the UKTV network.
The channel was available full-time on all platforms until 15 October 2007 when the hours were reduced on the Freeview platform, resulting in the channel stopping broadcasting at 6 pm each day. This was a result of the launch of Dave, which took over UKTV History broadcast capacity. UKTV History took over the slot used by the unsuccessful UKTV Bright Ideas that was sharing a slot with Virgin1 and Babestation.[5] The channel's inability to broadcast in prime time on Freeview resulted in a ratings drop. In November 2007, the channel had a 0.3 per cent share of all television viewing, compared to 0.5 per cent a year earlier.[6]
As part of a network-wide programme of relaunching all the UKTV channels under unique names and brands, UKTV History and UKTV History +1 were renamed as Yesterday and Yesterday +1, respectively, on 2 March 2009.[7] The new channel also took on extra programming including historical fact drama series and factual programmes previously broadcast on UKTV Documentary concerning the natural history of the British Isles.
On 1 June 2010, Yesterday reinstated its full broadcast hours on Freeview,[8] following the closure of the Virgin1 +1 channel.
On 7 October 2011, Yesterday +1 was reinstated on Virgin Media.[9]
On 24 July 2012, Yesterday offers more entertainment-led content along with a design refresh, which includes a new logo and idents, in order to attract a wider and younger audience, along with a new slogan, "Entertainment Inspired By History".[10] For example, the channel has broadcast more repeats of situation comedies, such as Last of the Summer Wine or Butterflies. The network moved to channel 19 on 19 September 2012, swapping with sister channel Dave.
In late 2014, Yesterday began slowly decreasing the amount of comedy and drama shown on the channel and branching out into more factual content, with notable additions including natural history, science and engineering alongside the classic slate of history programming.
On 8 December 2015, Yesterday became available on Freesat together with two of its UKTV sister channels Drama and former sister channel, Really.[11]
Yesterday +1 launched on Freeview channel 99 on 22 November 2018 but was removed on 16 January 2019.
On 10 June 2019, Yesterday moved to channel 25 on Freeview, a space previously occupied by its former sister channel Home, which Discovery, Inc. acquired along with Good Food and Really as part of a deal with its current owner BBC Studios.
Yesterday +1 returned on Freeview on channel 75 on 15 April 2020, with the channel moving up one slot, next to UKTV's newly acquired sister channel CCXTV, on 7 December 2020 (though channel 74 is only currently used for two hours of teleshopping a night rather than broadcasting any of Yesterday's programmes).[12] [13] On 4 November 2020, the channel moved to channel 26 as part of a move up where every channel from channel 24 to 54 on the platform moved up one place to allow BBC Four to move to channel 24 in Scotland due to new Ofcom rules regarding certain PSB channels requiring greater prominence on EPGs.
On 8 July 2022, test transmissions for the HD feed of Yesterday commenced, using the frequency 12226 H 27500 2/3 DVB-S2 8PSK.[14] A month later, on 8 August 2022, Yesterday's HD feed officially launched on Sky Q and Sky HD channel 155 where it replaced the standard definition feed on the EPG.[15] The HD feed was added to Virgin Media on 14 December 2022.
On 16 July 2024, Yesterday & Yesterday +1 were renamed to U&Yesterday & U&Yesterday +1, respectively as part of a network wide rebrand with the "U" masterbrand.
The majority of the channel's programmes are sourced from the BBC programme archives; however, some are bought in from other terrestrial stations and some productions are commissioned by UKTV themselves. Programmes previously shown on terrestrial channels like BBC One, Two and Four are usually edited for timing, to accommodate the current three commercial breaks within each hour-long programme. The most obvious example of this is for programmes originally broadcast on the BBC, as material lasting 58 minutes will be edited down to 42 minutes when shown on U&Yesterday. Some of U&Yesterday's notable programmes include: