History
Sky Television plc was originally Satellite Television Ltd. (SATV), a consortium originally set up by Brian Haynes in November 1980. Brian Haynes was a former journalist employed at Thames Television. In 1979 he produced a documentary for the TV Eye strand which looked at Ted Turner and his satellite broadcasting operations in the USA. He soon realised the potential of using satellites in providing a new and different kind of television broadcasting. Haynes first advised Thames Television, the Independent Broadcasting Authority and an industry group before setting up SATV.
In October 1981, SATV began test transmissions on the Orbital Test Satellite satellite after the European Space Agency allowed the company to test the satellite for the use of commercial television, with an hour of light entertainment in English each night. While at first the island of Malta was its official target it had a wide, pan-European, footprint. The low-powered satellite forced it, however, to broadcast to cable systems rather than directly to individual satellite dishes, which proved to be a losing proposition.
European satellite television plans started in the late 1960s, when plans were first laid for an experimental satellite. The Orbital Test Satellite was deployed in May 1978 and allowed the necessary testing to allow for Europe's first commercial venture in telecommunications and television. From 1978 to 1981 OTS was successful in illustrating the viability of Ku-Band technology for the continent of Europe. Following the completion of its test programme, excess transponder capacity was leased to SATV. While governments in Britain and other European countries wrestled with the allocation of their channels, Satellite Television pioneered cable and satellite television to provide Europe's first satellite-delivered cable TV service.
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