The Comedy Network came about from two comedy channels owned by different companies. It rooted from The Comedy Channel and Ha! The former belonging to Time Warner and the other to Viacom. These two channels were in competition with one another at all time and they were merged and launched to the public as one on April 1st 1991.
On June 1st 1991, The Comedy Network, changed its name to Comedy Central to avoid conflict with Canada’s CTV. Comedy Central remained a merged channel belonging both to Time Warner and Viacom, but in 2003 Viacom bought out Time Warner’s half.
The named it The Comedy Network in April, but they changed it to Comedy Central in June of the same year so they did not have any troubles with Canada’s CTV.