Sky1 - History

History

Sky1 started on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television Ltd., a consortium set up by Brian Hayes, formerly a sales executive at Thames Television, and it was Europe's first ever cable and satellite channel, originally broadcasting from the Orbital Test Satellite aimed to cable operators all over Europe; Norway and Finland being the first two countries to permit the new service's transmission via cable. (Malta and Switzerland were the next two countries to legalise cable transmission of the service, followed by West Germany). Reception of the OTS satellite in the British Isles required a satellite dish of approximately 10 feet wide, and it was believed that there were fewer than 50 privately-owned installations in the United Kingdom, that would enable direct-to-home reception of the service. Many programmes from the ITV companies' archives appeared on the schedules of the new channel, such as Please, Sir!, Dickens of London, The Rag Trade and Within These Walls, which in time were accompanied by some limited self-made programming, such as the music show Cable Countdown hosted by Mike Read. Initially, the channel's self-made programming and continuity played out from the Molinare Studios at Fouberts Place in London.

At first the station struggled financially, due to disappointing ratings in the countries in which it was officially available, which in turn led to insufficient advertising revenue and increasing difficulty in covering the high transmission costs, and by the second half of 1983, the station's ex-ITV management realised that they "could not capture Europe on the budget of Border Television", and put up the majority of the station's shares (approximately 65%, subsequently increased to 82%) for sale. It would be Rupert Murdoch, who described cable and satellite television as being "the most important single advance since Caxton invented the printing press" and saw it as the ideal way into making his definitive breakthrough into the British television industry, who would buy the shares (through his News International conglomerate) for the symbolic price of £1 plus outstanding debts. Eventually, Murdoch would buy the remaining shares of the company, taking full control.

Murdoch and the new management he put in charge of the channel changed the channel's programming mix greatly, and in January 1984 renamed the channel Sky Channel.

The channel among other things incorporated a large number of American imports in its schedules, and also increased the quantity produced of home grown programmes, including Sky Trax which covered European music, and children's programmes like Fun Factory and The DJ Kat Show, many of which came not only from Sky's own studios in London (having already abandoned the Molinare facilities by then), but also included programmes produced in the Netherlands by John de Mol's production company. Also, the new management adopted a more aggressive policy to reach an increasing number of cable households throughout Europe. Shortly after the channel's relaunch, the first cable system in the United Kingdom to incorporate it was Swindon Cable. In Ireland, Sky Channel started to become widely available among cable systems in around 1987.

Murdoch's changes made the channel the most successful of the early cable and satellite stations that launched in Europe in that period, and it gained very good ratings in those countries with a high penetration of cable television, such as the Benelux and Nordic countries. In Britain (where cable television, although already having a notable number of subscribers, had not yet developed as much as in Central and Northern Europe), market research gave it a 13% audience share in cable homes, surpassing both BBC2 and Channel 4 in those homes, with its children's programming (the station's then most successful field) increasing to a share of 22.4% (similar to the programmes seen on both Children's BBC and Children's ITV) (although in more recent years Sky1's popularity has fallen and the current viewing shares are below 1%). Some of Sky's special programmes, mainly WWF wrestling specials, managed to surpass both BBC1 and ITV among cable audiences. Even still, the channel continued to be a loss-making enterprise, losing £10 million in 1987. In contrast to the station's founders, Murdoch had pockets deep enough to sustain the operation even though it still failed to gain a profit despite its success.

On 8 June 1988, Murdoch announced at a press conference his plans to expand Sky's service to four channels, thus creating the Sky Television network. Sky Channel alongside the other three channels would move to the Astra satellite system (intended to direct-to-home reception), and the new network would centre its operations more specifically to the UK. (Up to then, Sky had from its initial satellite moved to the ECS-F1 (Eutelsat I-F4) satellite aiming at a pan-European audience).

On 5 February 1989, the Sky Television Network (Sky Channel, Sky News, Sky Movies and Eurosport) was launched, hence the move to the Astra 1A satellite was made effective. At the same time, prime-time broadcasts to European cable operators ended, being replaced by Eurosport, a joint venture between Sky and the European Broadcasting Union, and aimed at a pan-European audience (like Sky Channel had up to then).

Initially, Sky Channel's programming remained much the same (children's programmes, soaps, music programmes, and old US sitcoms and action series), except for a number of new game shows and a few international travel documentaries. Another programme that also came with the relaunch was Sky By Day, Sky TV's variation on ITV's more popular This Morning, hosted by ex-Radio One DJ Tony Blackburn (who had moved to commercial radio by then) and ex-Magpie presenter Jenny Hanley. The show had a mix of entertainment, gossip, fashion, etc. Yet it was noticeably low budget and had a small fan base.

On 30 July 1989 the channel was renamed Sky One and confined its broadcasting to Britain and Ireland only. But it was not until 1990–91 that it begin to acquire more recent programming, an early success being Moonlighting, which the BBC had previously screened but not repeated. Sky One also picked up some programming (and more importantly, advertisers) from its merger with BSB's Galaxy.

After many years in the clear, on 1 September 1993 Sky One was encrypted as part of the Sky Multichannels subscription package, and could no longer be viewed outside England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland without exporting a box, or receiving it over cable (although it had already been encrypted for a while since its original launch and first went in the clear in around 1987). It continued to be the most-watched satellite channel in Britain and Ireland, a position it held for most of the 1990s, with many first-run US imports such as The Simpsons (which traditionally has been the channel's main selling-point, remaining a satellite exclusive until it finally made its terrestrial television appearance on BBC2 in 1996), Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld, ER and The X-Files, as well as some older programmes such as the various Star Trek series, Hill Street Blues, M*A*S*H*, and Lucille Ball's various comedy series.

The success of the channel lead to the launch on 1 September 1996 of a companion channel, Sky 2, but it was not a success and closed after just a day behind one year, on 31 August 1997. In contrast to the Sky2 that was later relaunched, this channel featured even more first-run programmes, and it broadcast only at night, from 7:00pm to 6:00am.

In 2000, a dedicated feed of Sky One for Ireland was launched. For most of this Irish feed's existence, the only difference between it and the United Kingdom feed has been differing commercials and programme promotions.

On 9 December 2002, Sky One launched their new logo along with new idents. Sky One again gained a sister channel, Sky One Mix, which was intended as a "catch-up" channel, screening repeats of key Sky One programmes later in the same week.

In June 2003, the channel started broadcasting in 16:9 widescreen. However, all TV commercials were broadcast in 4:3 until November 2005, because they were played off the same servers for all Sky channels, many of which were not broadcast in widescreen.

On 21 September 2004, Sky One Mix was subsequently renamed Sky Mix.

On 31 October 2005, Sky Mix was renamed as Sky Two with the launch of a second sister channel Sky Three.

'Sky One' was rebranded as 'Sky1' on 31 August 2008 at 6:00pm, with presentational elements featuring blue gem shards as 'solids' to fit the element theme also used by Sky2 and Sky3 (which use 'liquids' and 'particles' respectively in their presentational elements). At launch there were four idents: "Bones", "Whack", "Twister" and "Boxes".

On 1 February 2011, Sky unveiled new presentation for many of its channels – Sky1 being no exception. The idea behind the idents is reflecting everyday life, the sequences are filmed in typical meeting places with people coming together having fun, whilst making up part of the scene is giant mirror-finished '1' icon. Gradually in 2012, the mirror-finished '1' idents were withdrawn replaced by simple programme specific idents for Got to Dance, Mad Dogs, Stella, Ashley Banjo's Secrete Street Crew, The Cafe, Modern Family, Spy, Starlings, Glee, Spartacus Blood and Sand, A League of Their Own and Trollied.

On 25 August 2012, it was announced by Stuart Murphy, director of Sky entertainment channels, that a one hour timeshift of Sky1 and Sky Atlantic would launch in the Autumn of 2012, with the former launching on 12 November 2012. The timeshift channel offers most of Sky1's programming, however The Simpsons does not be broadcast as BSkyB are prohibited from doing so under the current terms of their licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution. An on-screen message instead appears redirecting viewers to Sky1.