That's not exactly true.

Yes, Seinfeld started at BBC2 on Wednesdays at 9pm in October 1993. Interestingly they started it from the first episode of season two, the very short first season has never been screened on terrestrial telly. Obviously BBC1 was showing the news at the time, but ITV showed numerous films and specials, it used to be a big slot for them. It was also opposite two England matches during its run.

The series ran in that slot until Christmas (and the last episode was at 8pm) and then when it returned in April 1994 it was on Saturday nights at around ten o'clock. It stayed there for two seasons, and then in 1996 it was moved to a post-Newsnight slot, paired with The Larry Sanders Show. For a while it was shown three times a week in this slot. For the last three seasons, in 1999, 2000 and 2001 it was moved again to midnight, stripped across the week, in September and October when Parliament wasn't sitting (as Despatch Box filled the slot the rest of the year).

In terms of scheduling, the big problem BBC2 has always had with American sitcoms is their length - 22 and a half minutes, usually, which is a pain in the arse. When it was at 9pm it meant the next show was on at 9.25 which is awkward as it doesn't match any other channel so there's no scope to hook channel hopping viewers.

This is one of the reasons why it used to be paired with Larry Sanders, together it was 45 minutes which fitted just right in the slot between Newsnight and Despatch Box. But when Sanders finished, they couldn't find anything else to pair it up with, so they ended up moving it to midnight where the awkward length didn't matter so much.

Although BBC2 never showed the first series, it had been shown in the UK on Sky One and, before that, The Comedy Channel, the short-lived Sky channel, which screened it for the first time in the UK in February 1992.

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?p=36159132#post36159132