BskyB and Future Gazing

“Sky launches next week, but its success is by no means assured” - The Guardian 1st February 1989

There was huge amount of skepticism in the British press and European media circles when Sky announced its UK plans as it was up against British Satellite Broadcasting initiated by Pearson, Granada and Virgin.

Amidst all this, Sky Television went on air at 6pm on Sunday 5 February, 1989 beating its rival British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) by a full year, to be the first DTH player in UK. Come November 1989 it had already signed up 1 million subscribers. Some of the firsts it brought to UK were:

• Four free to air television channels,
• A 24 hours News Channel Sky News,
• 18 hours of sports

And, by the time rival BSB launched in April 1990, Sky had a lead of one full year and more than a million subscribers. With both the companies running into losses and lack luster performance of BSB, November 1990 saw the merger of BSB and Ssky and BskyB became the sole DTH operator in the country.

Tying up Content and Technology

In May 1992, Sky signed an exclusive £ 304 million TV deal with FA premium league making Sky the only platform on which soccer fans could watch their games. This coupled with the deal for Cricket World Cup signed up in early 1992, sent the sales of dishes skyrocketing. By 1996 Sky was present in 15% of all TV homes where as cable was present in less than half the number of homes.

From a humble beginning with 4 channels in 1989, Sky launched its digital service in October 1998 with 140 channels. This move was backed up by distribution of free digiboxes and minidishes . Soon BskyB broke the 1 million mark for digital subscribers making it the fastest growing digital platform in the world.

Digitization coupled with foolproof, encrypted customer management system - a must for beaming Hollywood flicks and premium spots to its pay subscribers gave BskyB exclusive content and well paying subscribers to sustain its future investments into pushing the new digital frontier.

Continuing to harvest technology BskyB introduced many firsts in the British market:

• August 1999 fixture between Arsenal and Manchester United the world's first live interactive football match.
• In 2000 Sky News Active became the world's first interactive news channel.
• In 2001 sky+ a set top box with a personal video recorder was introduced and
• By September 2001, BskyB became fully digital after switching off its analogue signal.

Freeview - Digital Terrestrial Telecast

Digital Terrestrial Telecast platform enables broadcast of multiple television channels for every analogue terrestrial channel. As per the Economist in an article in September 2005 five terrestrial channels won a viewership of 83% in freeview homes and BBC's large share helped justify its license fee.

In a sense digital terrestrial platform is presenting BskyB with its greatest challenge, launched in 2002 named “Freeview”. The platform allows homes to view 30 digital channels at a one-time cost of £60. The service also beams 20 digital radio channels and primarily thrives on advertising revenues.