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Sky One

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Sky1
CountryUnited Kingdom, Ireland
Ownership
OwnerBritish Sky Broadcasting

Sky1 is the flagship BSkyB entertainment channel available in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

The channel first launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, and is the fourth-oldest TV channel in the UK, behind BBC One (2 November 1936), ITV (22 September 1955) and BBC Two (20 April 1964). S4C and Channel 4 began over 6 months later on the 1 and 2 November 1982 respectively.

In the United Kingdom the channel is available on digital satellite via Sky on channel 106 as well as through digital cable via Virgin Media and as well as through IPTV via Sky Player and TalkTalk TV. In the Republic of Ireland the channel is available on Sky Ireland on channel 106, UPC Ireland on channel 114 and Magnet Networks.

Sky1 listings include some very popular broadcasts—many imported from North America—including 24, The X-Files, Stargate (SG1, SGA & SGU), Caprica, Battlestar Galactica, Bones, Lost, Fringe, Prison Break, House, The Simpsons, and Lie to Me.

History

Sky1 logo from 2008-2011

Sky1 started on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television Ltd., a consortium set up by Brian Hayes, formerly controller of 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 less than 50 privately-owned installations in the UK 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 Central London.

However, at first the station struggled financially, due to disappointing ratings in the countries in which it was officially available, which in turn lead to insufficient advertising revenue and increasing difficulty of 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 UK's television industry, that 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 big amount of American imports to 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 Central 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 UK 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 the UK (where cable television, although already having a notable amount of subscribers, had not yet developed as much as in Central and Northern Europe), market research gave it 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). However Sky 1 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, and US action series), except for a number of new game shows and a few international travel documentaries. Another notable 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 confirmed its broadcasting to UK and Ireland only. But it was not until 1990-91 that it began 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 the UK 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.

File:Sky 1 Ident 96.jpg
Sky 1 logo in 1996

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 19.00 (7.00pm) to 06.00 (6.00am).

In 2000, a dedicated feed of Sky One for the Republic of Ireland was launched. For most of this Irish feed's existence, the only difference between it and the UK 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.[1] However all TV commercials were broadcast in 4:3 until November 2005, [citation needed] 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 as 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 18:00,[2] with presentational elements featuring blue gem shards as 'solids' to fit the element theme also used by Sky2 and Sky3 (which use 'liquids' and 'gases' respectively in their presentational elements). At launch there were four idents: "Bones", "Whack", "Twister" and "Boxes".

Sky1 received another new look on 1 February 2011, with idents involving restaurants and swimming pools.

Sky1 HD

File:Sky1 HD logo.png
Sky1 HD logo (2008-2011)

To coincide with launch of Sky HD, Sky1 HD began broadcasting on 22 May 2006. The channel is a simulcast of Sky1 and screens high-definition versions of some of the channel's programming, which include Lost, Bones, 24, Fringe, Prison Break, House, and most recently new episodes of The Simpsons. Programmes that are not available in HD are upscaled (Although Sky1 does show the original widescreen film from Malcolm in the Middle, unlike most US broadcasts, since the series was originally filmed on Panavision widesceen film but cropped to full-screen by most broadcasters. This airing of the original film preserves the shows appearance without stretching or upscaling, although some scenes were compromised for widescreen and had to be upscaled).

Sky have stated that they intend to increase the amount of HD content they show, and hoped that by the end of 2008, two thirds of all prime time shows, and 90% of their own original commissions, would be in HD.[3] There was also a new Sky1 HD logo which was introduced along with the rebrand on 31 August 2008.

On 1 October 2010, Sky1 HD launched on Virgin Media channel 122, with Sky2 moving to channel 123 and Sky3 moving to channel 180 on 22 September 2010, to make way for the new channel.[4]

Virgin Media dispute

On 1 March 2007, at 00:00 GMT, Sky's basic channels, which included Sky1, Sky2, Sky News, Sky Sports News, Sky Travel and Sky Travel Extra were removed from the Virgin Media cable television services after a dispute between Virgin Media and BSkyB. This was due to the expiry of their previous carriage agreement and the companies' inability to reach a new deal.[5][6] Virgin issued legal proceedings against Sky over the dispute in April 2007.

The Virgin Media predecessor Telewest was involved in a similar situation in late 2004 when negotiations for renewed carriage of the Nickelodeon channels broke down. Telewest was unwilling to pay extra to keep the channels and preferred to simply drop them. Other Viacom owned channels remained such as MTV and Paramount Comedy 1. The reaction to this by customers was fairly large and many left the provider to rival Sky, others were retained as Telewest offered them a free upgrade to the Disney Channel for periods of between one and three months, others were reportedly offered upgrades to Sky Movies packages in a desperate attempt to keep them from leaving. The Nickelodeon channels returned to the Telewest platform on 12 February 2005 following successful renegotiations in Nickelodeon's favour.

At the beginning of March 2008 the two companies were reported to have resumed discussions over the dispute. Virgin chief executive Neil Berkett was reported as saying they had "continued interest in securing Sky basics back on our platform". The resumed talks had followed shortly after both Virgin and BSkyB had launched appeals against a recent Competition Appeal Tribunal ruling on BSkyB's 17.9% stake in ITV plc.[7][8]

On 4 November 2008, a carriage deal between BSkyB and Virgin Media channels was reached and BSkyB's channels were available on Virgin's cable service from 13 November 2008.[9][10] The Sky basic channels were spread across each tier of Virgin's cable TV service: Sky3 and Sky News were made available in the lowest M tier; Sky Sports News joined the M+ tier; Sky1 and Sky2 were made available in the L tier; and Sky Arts 1, Sky Arts 2, Sky Real Lives and Sky Real Lives 2 joined the XL tier.[10]

Programming

See also: List of programmes broadcast by Sky1

US programmes

Wikinews has related news:

The channel relies heavily on screenings of US television programmes, with many coming from Murdoch's Fox Network. The Simpsons has been airing on Sky1 since both of its early years, making the series not only the longest running program on Sky1 but also the longest running prime time animated series to date. As many as five episodes of The Simpsons are broadcast each evening, with any new episodes generally being shown on Thursday. Sky1 has exclusive rights in the UK to show the most recent series of The Simpsons. Another early and long running fixture was Married... with Children, which ran all through the 1990s, but in the early 2000s the show suddenly disappeared from its regular schedule and has not been screened on any Sky channel since.

Sky1 was also the original home to the UK's first run showings of episodes of ER and Friends, for seasons 4-6 of both shows (Channel 4 had shown Seasons 1-3 first), giving Sky1 some of the highest ratings for any satellite channel. In 2000, 2.8 million viewers watched an episode of Friends, the highest rated show on any satellite channel. However when Channel 4 launched their own digital sister channel E4 they outbid Sky1 for exclusive first run rights to both shows. However, Sky1 still held the repeat rights for the early seasons of both shows for several years.

Sky1 previously broadcast WWE (formally World Wrestling Federation (WWF)) programming, before moving it all to Sky Sports 3. Sky1 currently broadcasts The WWE Experience, a one-hour round-up of Raw, SmackDown and NXT programming and WWE Superstars.

Sky1 occasionally screens older 20th Century Fox films such as Die Hard as part of its evening schedule, although they are shown with ad breaks, unlike films on premium film channels.

Programmes that have received their UK premiere screenings on Sky1 include:

Sky One share of viewing 1992-2008. Peak was 9.5%, July 1993, current 0.9%

Programmes commissioned by Sky1

Sky has commissioned a number of UK-made programmes such as Dream Team, a drama series based on a fictional football team; The Strangerers (a science fiction sitcom that was dropped after one series and never repeated); Al Murray's sitcom Time Gentlemen Please; and Baddiel's Syndrome. Hex, another sci-fi show, had proved popular but was cancelled in April 2006 and Mile High also proved quite popular but it only lasted from 2003-2005. Sky One commissioned Terry Pratchett's Hogfather for Christmas 2006 proving to be their most successful programme ever. Following the success of The Hogfather Sky brought out in 2008 an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic and its second half The Light Fantastic, and in 2010 Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, the 33rd book in The Discworld series. Sky also co-produces The 4400 and co-financed the first season of Battlestar Galactica.

It also screens many "reality" shows such as Cruise with Stelios, Road Wars, Shock Treatment, World's Deadliest Gangs, Glenn Martin DDS, World of Pain, Road Raja, Ibiza Uncovered, Cirque de Celebrité and the most recent series Hairspray: The School Musical. It also recently has received success with entertainment science shows Brainiac: Science Abuse and spin-offs, Brainiac: History Abuse and Brainiac's Test Tube Baby and also Mission Implausible. Less successful shows include Harry Enfield's Brand Spanking New Show.

Sky1 have also commissioned a number of game shows including Blockbusters. The most recent game show is from Mark Burnett, Are You Smarter Than a 10-Year Old, based on a United States format. On 30 January 2008, Sky One announced plans to bring back the UK 1990s game show Gladiators which was subsequently cancelled in 2010. [1]

Continuity announcers

Current NME Radio DJ Claire Sturgess has been a "voice" of Sky1 since 1998, and was the sole announcer from 2001 until 2005. As one of Sky1's four announcers, her voice-overs are pre-recorded once a week and played out by an automated system.

Live continuity announcements air each evening, in 2009 they were voiced by announcers Dave Kelly, Faye Bamford and Philippa Collins. In 2010 live three new continuity announcers were hired. During the day pre-recorded announcements air, promoting shows from all the different Sky channels.[11]

References

  1. ^ Alan Jay (2 May 2003). "Sky confirms expansion of widescreen broadcasting". Digital Spy. Retrieved 2 August 2007.
  2. ^ Bowser, Jacquie. "BSkyB rebrands flagship Sky channels". Retrieved 2010-03-31.
  3. ^ Neil Wilkes (22 May 2007). "Sky promises more HD programming". Digital Spy.
  4. ^ "Sky1 HD to launch on VM on Friday". TheAirwaves. 28 September 2010.
  5. ^ James Welsh (1 March 2007). "Sky One, Sky News pulled from Virgin". Digital Spy.
  6. ^ "BSkyB channels taken off Virgin". BBC News. 1 March 2007.
  7. ^ James Robinson (2 March 2008). "Virgin in talks to resolve dispute over Sky channels". The Guardian.
  8. ^ Dave West (3 March 2008). "'Talks resume' over Sky carriage dispute". Digital Spy.
  9. ^ Welsh, James (4 November 2008). "Sky1, Sky News back on Virgin cable". Digital Spy.
  10. ^ a b Goss, Patrick (4 November 2008). "Sky1 returns to Virgin Media". TechRadar.
  11. ^ http://www.theidentgallery.com/sky1-2008.php

Template:BARB UK viewing figures

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