The term television channel generally refers to either a television station or its cable/satellite counterpart (both outlined below). Sometimes, it is confused with the term television network, which (when properly utilized) describes a group of geographically distributed television stations that share affiliation/ownership and some or all of their programming with one another.
The term may also refer to a physical or virtual location over which a television channel (in the above sense) is distributed. For example, in North America, "channel 2" refers to the broadcast frequency of 55.25 MHz video/59.75 MHz audio, and may be shared by many different television stations or cable-distributed channels depending on one's location and service provider. This terminology may be muddled somewhat in other juridictions, for instance Europe, where terrestrial channels are commonly mapped from physical channels to common numerical positions (i.e. BBC One does not broadcast on any particular "channel 1" but is nonetheless mapped to the "1" input on most British television sets). On digital platforms, such (location) channels are usually purely arbitrary.

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