Lifetime Television, often referred to as Lifetime TV, or most commonly, Lifetime, is an American cable television

Cable television

Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

 specialty channel

Specialty channel

A specialty channel can be a commercial broadcasting or non-commercial television channel which consists of television programming focused on a single genre, subject or targeted television market at a specific demographic....

 devoted to movies

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, sitcoms

Situation comedy

A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...

 and drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

s, all of which are either geared toward women or feature women in lead roles. The cable network is owned by A&E Television Networks

A&E Television Networks

A&E Television Networks is a U.S. media company that owns a group of television channels available via cable & satellite in the US and abroad...

. Lifetime's main competitors as "women's channels" are Oxygen

Oxygen (TV channel)

Oxygen is an American cable television specialty channel with television programming marketed towards women, with a format similar to Lifetime.- History :...

 and WE tv

WE TV

We TV is the third TV channel from Malayalam Communications Ltd, in Kerala and based at Trivandrum. The other two channels of this company are Kairali TV and People TV. WE TV is mainly aimed at the youth and was officially launched on April 14, 2007. Mr...

, although both of those services have substantially lower ratings

Nielsen Ratings

Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...

 than Lifetime.
Lifetime was established as the result of a merger of Hearst

Hearst Corporation

The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...

's Daytime network, established in March 1982 as a four hour per day service with women's programming and Viacom

Viacom

Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...

's Cable Health Network, established in June 1982 as a 24-hour service that carried health and wellness programming.

The service originally aired women's daytime programming Monday through Saturdays, and offered the Lifetime Medical Television service on Sundays from November 1983 to June 1993 carrying programming for health professionals.