Wanting to set up an IRC channel.

What would I need to do in order to set up a channel?

I haven't used IRC in about 6-7 years but as I recall you just connect to a serve and open a channel and if the channel name isn't registered or being used a new channel is created. After that you can register it using the commands provided by the server.

^^ yep, what he said.

Join an IRC network, read their rules, join a channel, register your nickname, register your channel, then spend some time learning how to admin a channel to control things like:

channel flood
out of channel messages
spammers
rejoin on kick or drop
auto ident
auto join
AOP and HOP lists

It's good stuff, jump in, have fun, and ask lots of questions.