The term television channel generally refers to either a television station or its cable/satellite counterpart (both outlined below). Sometimes, especially outside US and in the context of cable/satellite television, it is confused with the term television network, which (when properly used) 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 Northern America, "channel 2" refers to the broadcast band of 54 to 60 MHz, with carrier frequencies of 55.25 MHz for NTSC analog video (VSB) and 59.75 MHz for analog audio (FM). Channels may be shared by many different television stations or cable-distributed channels depending on the location and service provider.

This terminology may be muddled somewhat in other jurisdictions, 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 arbitrary, due to virtual channels.