Discovery People was an American cable television network. The channel was launched on March 31, 1997 by

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

as CBS Eye on People, and featured news and human interest stories from

CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio broadcaster CBS. It is headquartered in New York City. CBS News television programs include ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs ''CBS News Sunday Morn ...

. The channel suffered significant losses, in part because few cable providers were willing to carry it. By the end of its first year on the air, it was only available in 11 million homes, less than half of what most cable channels need to turn a profit. In mid-1998, it was announced that

Discovery Communications Discovery, Inc. was an American multinational mass media factual television conglomerate based in New York City. Established in 1982, the company operated a group of factual and lifestyle television brands, such as the namesake Discovery Cha ...

would buy 50 percent of the channel and take operational control. It dropped "CBS" from its title to become simply Eye on People. On January 11, 1999, Discovery bought the network from

CBS Corporation CBS Corporation was an American multinational media company with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing and television production. It was split from Viacom on December 31, 2005, alongside an entirely new Viacom; both ...

and renamed it Discovery People. Discovery continued to license programming from CBS, combining it with some of its own programming. Discovery Communications began gradually phasing out Discovery People's operations, using Discovery People's distribution for other networks. For

DirecTV DirecTV, LLC is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital Satellite television, s ...

customers, the channel was replaced by Discovery Health on December 1, 1999. In February 2000, Discovery announced that they intended to pull the plug on the channel.

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{{commons category, Discovery People English-language television stations in the United States Television channels and stations established in 1997 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2000 Defunct television networks in the United States Former Discovery, Inc. subsidiaries CBS Former CBS Corporation subsidiaries CBS News Former joint ventures