Viasat Explore
Viasat Explore is a television channel owned by Modern Times Group showing documentaries about wild animals, extreme sports, adventure, travel and technology. Viasat Explore is a pan Nordic and pan East European service. With headquarters based in London, United Kingdom, the channel started its broadcasts in the Scandinavian countries and after a few years expanded to many East European markets including the Baltic countries.
The service was launched in January 2002 as Viasat Explorer in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. On 1 November 2003 it expanded into Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Belarus, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. In 2006, all Serbian cable operators and their satellite platform, Total TV began with broadcasting this channel.
Viasat Explore does not produce any programmes of its own but acquiers programming from American and European production houses.
The channel is now a 24-hour service in direct competition with the Discovery Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Since 2012, Viasat Explorer together with sisterchannels Viasat History and Viasat Nature are broadcast in HD together with the SD feed on the Viasat satellite platform. The channel was rebranded as Viasat Explore on 29 April 2014, gaining a new ident package and logo and dropping the "X" letter from its logo in flavour of an "E".
