Carlton Food Network
Carlton Food Network was a British pay television digital terrestrial channel, owned by Carlton Television. It launched at midday on 2 September 1996 and closed on 30 November 2001. It was part of a group of non-terrestrial channels operated by Carlton, which also included Carlton Select – with whom Carlton Food Network time-shared space with – Carlton World, Carlton Kids, and Carlton Cinema.
The channel was also available via the PanAmSat's PAS-4 satellite in Europe, the Middle East and Africa on the South African DStv service.
History
Carlton Food Network launched on Monday, 2 September 1996 on cable. It originally broadcast on weekday afternoons, from 12 noon until 5pm, but later it expanded its broadcasting hours to become a seven-day-a-week, all-day service, broadcasting daily from 9am until 5pm. Carlton Food Network shared space with evenings-only service SelecTV, which was subsequently bought by Carlton and renamed Carlton Select. It began broadcasting on the ONdigital platform at its launch in November 1998, which was part owned by Carlton along with another ITV company Granada, who also operated its own group of Granada branded channels under a partnership with Sky known as Granada Sky Broadcasting. In early 2000, Carlton Select was closed down and its hours on ONdigital were given over to Carlton Food Network resulting in CFN becoming a full-time channel. However the channel remained a daytime only service on cable with Carlton Cinema airing during the evenings in place of Carlton Select.The Taste era
In September 2000, Carlton announced it had a signed a joint venture with the supermarket chain Sainsbury's to co-brand the channel. The deal saw the announcement of interactive services for digital TV viewers that would allow them to order recipe ingredients from Sainsbury's through their set-top box. The rebranding took place the following May, with the channel becoming Taste CFN and the launch of the taste.co.uk website, merging Carlton's SimplyFood and Sainsbury's tasteforlife websites. The channel was now promoted by Sainsbury's both in-store and on its website.However, the partnership was brief, and it was announced in August 2001 that the venture was to be disbanded on 1 September. Less than expected revenues from e-commerce and a weakened advertising market were blamed on the decision to close the venture, which saw the return of ownership of the Taste CFN channel back to Carlton and the return of the web-based recipe and wine assets to Sainsbury's, with the taste.co.uk website being shut down and its assets being reused by Sainsbury's own websites.
Although Carlton returned ownership of Taste CFN as part of the venture disbanding, Carlton decided to close the channel and it ceased broadcasting on 30 November. The final day of transmission for the channel was full of never-before-seen programming. At 23:58, Taste CFN aired a farewell montage of clips from the programming aired all throughout its five years of operation, followed by a final airing of its ident, with a closing announcement:
Afterward, before a final fade-out and showing Carlton Cinema on-screen, this caption appeared on-screen:
On ITV Digital, it was anticipated that the slot was to be filled by a new channel on the now struggling platform, but in the end, the space became a preview channel for ITV Digital suppliers and potential customers.
The channel also shut down in Africa, where it was carried on the DStv platform.