Sky UK – Sky Television

If we really want to learn about the story of Sky UK then it’s not possible to do so without knowing the background story which is the beginning of Sky Television. Sky was originally set up as a TV channel producing company and it had a pioneering role in becoming the first European pay per view channel provider in Europe. Sky Television has originally started up with its own 9 channels. Let’s take a brief look at the history and the main milestones for Sky being still Sky Television.

Sky Television was set up as a satellite television producer and provider and it was started in 1980 by Brian Haynes in the United Kingdom. Haynes had plenty of expertise in dealing with the producing of TV channels as he has previously worked for Thames Television, which was the producer of hundreds of movies and TV series in the UK in the Seventies and Eighties. The lead example in the making of Sky Television was the American Ted Turner and his TV Empire the Turner Broadcasting System. This is how Sky has become the first ever satellite TV broadcaster in Europe.

The first test TV transmissions for commercial TV were started in 1981 and by 1982 it had become clear that satellite is a great way to transmit TV broadcasting to millions of TVs which are also connected to their own satellite in order to transmit the codes to television. The first official Sky channel (which was simply called Sky) has started its broadcasting officially in 1984. This channel was a mix of music, entertainment and sports programs. The availability of Sky was widened from 1987 and this is the time from which the channel was watchable in multiple countries in Europe too. Despite the sound success Sky Channel alone could not be made profitable, therefore Haynes has decided to re-create it in form of a network. This is when Sky Network was officially born and it had 4 channels. The original Sky Channel had become Sky One while the other three had been named Sky Movies, Sky Sports and Sky News which was one of Europe’s very first nonstop news channels.

Sky Television has been finally merged with the British Satellite Broadcasting Alliance which has been functioning in parallel with Sky Television for a while now. As both companies were deemed unprofitable as two, they have finally decided to join arms and carry on as a joint venture with Sky management. This is from when we can officially call Sky as Sky UK. The finalization of the venture has happened in 1990 and Sky UK has become one of the largest cable, satellite TV and telecommunications company since.

Sky UK has become the first company in Europe to come up with the Pay Per View and Pay per TV models and they were also the first ones who gave a specific decrypting device along with the satellite dishes in order to make Sky broadcasting exclusive.