Commonly, the term "television channel" is used to refer either to a terrestrial television station or its cable/satellite counterpart (both outlined below). Sometimes, especially outside the U.S. and in the context of cable/satellite television, it is used instead of the term television network, which otherwise (in its technical use above) describes a group of geographically-distributed television stations that share affiliation/ownership and some or all of their programming with one another.
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 and changeable, due to virtual channels.