ITS name could have been dreamt up during a boozy night in the pub. In fact, if its viewers thought that, the creators of Dave wouldn’t mind at all.

The digital television channel was greeted with scepticism at its launch last October but it has proved to be one of this year’s big hits, tripling its audience in eight months.

Its mix of blokey repeats of Top Gear, Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You and QI, Stephen Fry’s highbrow panel show, has seen it rise from the 29th largest station in multi-channel homes to 10th.

At a time when the circulation of men’s magazines is under pressure, it has coralled a male audience only football or rugby coverage can usually attract.

“We have been through a lot of lads’ media that were limited to the baser interests of male audiences,” said David Abraham, chief executive of UKTV, Dave’s owner. “We felt our content meant we could do something more intelligent.”

Its promotions followed the same logic, entreating viewers to “Visit a place full of complete and utter wits”.

Dave’s success has come at a good time – just as Virgin Media, half-owner of UKTV, is considering a sale of its television-channel assets.

The new brand was based on the concept that “everyone knows a bloke called Dave” and is not a tribute to Abraham, its boss. The idea was that the channel would become a surrogate friend to men who tuned in.

“There were a lot of people in the industry sniggering behind their hands at what was going on,” said Steve North, Dave’s channel head, describing the time his team were kicking around new names. “We knew it was a risk, but a calculated risk.”

Dave once went by the unwieldy name of UKTV G2. It was a livelier repeats channel than its big brother, UKTV Gold, home to Only Fools and Horses and The Two Ronnies, but still lacked edge in a cluttered, multi-channel world.

“Some might feel it looked a little stodgy before, with that rather mechanistic brand,” said Robin Paxton, former managing director of Discovery Networks Europe.

“They have not done an enormous amount to change the content or the fundamental proposition of the channel. But by implementing some clever rebranding and some clever marketing, it has been a huge success.”

By ditching the usual channel numbers or genre titles – like Channel 4 or Sky Sports – Abraham was looking for the sort of memorable, catchy name that is common on the internet, such as Google or MySpace.

UKTV clearly has an eye on the future – in a world where television downloads are likely to dominate, the branding of channels will become even more crucial. “We are future-proofing our business,” said Abraham.

So far, it appears to be working. Dave’s peak-time audience has tripled and hit 750,000 for one edition of QI. It might not sound a lot, but it is enough to make the channel one of the most popular for men aged between 16 and 44. And it regularly beats BBC3 and Sky One.

“The profile has not changed hugely, but the audience has grown without losing the profile,” said Paul Rowlinson, of the media agency Mindshare. He estimates that Dave reaches 25m viewers a month, mainly men, giving it a unique selling point with advertisers.

“If you want to go elsewhere to get the same sort of audience as Dave, you have to go to live sport – and that is more expensive,” said Rowlinson.

Dave’s advertising slots are sold in a package with the rest of the UKTV channels – UKTV Gold, UKTV History, UKTV Food and five others – so it is difficult to measure how its pricing has changed. However, the company estimates that Dave’s growth will add an extra £25m to advertising income this year.

UKTV is a joint venture between Virgin Media and BBC Worldwide. Set up 11 years ago, the idea was to marry the BBC’s content with what was then Telewest’s distribution. With 33m viewers every month, it has performed well, with turnover of more than £200m.

UKTV was the first television outlet through which the BBC could make money from advertising. This is changing, since an agreement was struck with YouTube. And there is Kangaroo, a commercial version of the BBC’s iPlayer that will be launched soon.

However, UKTV’s parents have not been the easiest of bedfellows. The BBC would like new shareholders to inject extra content or distribution into the venture, whereas Virgin Media – distracted by its creation through the merger of NTL and Telewest and subsequent takeover of Virgin Mobile – has been happy to rake in the money.

The BBC has drawn a dividend from UKTV since 2005, receiving £4.5m last year. Virgin, which funds the venture through a £146m loan, was paid £38m in loan repayments, dividends and interest.

Since the debt markets seized up, Virgin has been considering its future and is expected to look for a buyer for its UKTV stake as well as wholly owned channels such as Living. It could raise £800m for the group, with the bulk of the value tied up in UKTV.

Because it cannot extend its borrowings beyond £350m, BBC Worldwide may be unable to buy out Virgin, although it has been consulting private-equity partners on the subject.

UKTV gives any investor instant prestige in Britain’s pay-TV market. It is the second-largest pay-TV operator after Sky – and could be just what Time Warner, Disney, NBC Universal and Discovery are looking for. Sky may also be interested – it made a bid when Virgin Media considered a sale before.

Perhaps more valuable, though, is the close trading relationship with the BBC that any buyer would inherit. The corporation’s programming has proved to be Dave’s best friend.

Dave’s success is also a testament to the power of Freeview. At the same time as it changed name, Dave began airing on the platform, which is used in 11m homes. In pay-TV homes, however, it also increased its audience by 56% among adults.

Although it remains on satellite and cable, the model follows, in part, that of E4, Channel 4’s youth channel, which ditched its subscriptions in May 2005 to air on Freeview. Thanks to increased audiences and higher advertising income, the move increased revenues to roughly £100m in 2007, compared with about £40m in 2004.

It helps that a channel on Freeview competes with no more than 40 others – on Sky, the competition could number up to 600. “Freeview is a much more limited pond to fish in,” said Rowlinson.

Abraham has no plans to move channels onto Freeview in the future. “We are very committed to pay-TV,” he said. “The revenues from Virgin and Sky are very beneficial in terms of rights and investing in programming.”

It is launching a new subscription channel in October to re-run recent BBC dramas such as Mistresses and Lark Rise to Candleford, as well as a new Richard & Judy show.

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