Documentary television is a genre of television programming that broadcasts documentaries.

• Documentary television series, a television series which is made up of documentary episodes.
• Documentary television film, a documentary film is made specially for television stations or for specialty documentary channels, or in case of political and historical documentary subjects in news channels, without the intention of showing it in movie theaters. This film is include in television movies and distinguished with theatrical feature films. Another good example of television documentaries are the travel documentaries that are featured in specialized geographical or tourism television channels like the National Geographic Channel. The films might end up showing though in film societies or in theaters that specialize in showing documentaries. However, in rare occasions, the television documentaries become so popular that they are launched for wider release in movie theaters.

History of television documentary

Televised documentary finds its roots in film, photojournalism, and radio. Edwin L Murrow's See It Now^[1] is credited as documentary's first appearance on broadcast television in 1951.

In 2012, the Emmy award Board of Directors announced that they were creating a 29th genre category of professional awards^[2] and renamed the "nonfiction" category to "documentary".

Example channels

• Al Jazeera Documentary Channel
• Animal Planet
• Discovery Channel
• DOC: The Documentary Channel
• Docu TVE
• Documentary (TV channel)
• History (TV channel)
• National Geographic Channel
• Science (TV channel)

References