Kanaal Z appeared in Flanders on 1 February 1999 on the, then still analog, cable. The channel was half owned by Roularta and half owned by the then publishing company Tijd, publisher of De Financieel-Economische Tijd. On 15 May 2000, the French-language counterpart Canal Z started and in 2001 RTL Z started in the Netherlands. In 2001 Kanaal Z and Canal Z were also on the cable in Brussels. Time did not want to bear the losses after a few years and at the beginning of 2002 Roularta acquired a 51% majority. At the end of 2002, Kanaal Z was completely owned by Roularta.From 20 April 2009, Kanaal Z started to work together with the VVMMa.Kanaal Z uses the technical facilities of VTM , such as the news studio and camera crews. Despite the collaboration, Kanaal Z remains a 100% Roularta subsidiary and was therefore not accommodated under the VMMa (VMMa is partly owned by Roularta).In 2010 cable distributor Telenet shifted the transmitter of the analogue cable to the basic package of its digital cable . Since July 2016, the channel at Telenet can be received in HD.