About Sky
The subscription television company Sky, also known as BSkyB or British Sky Broadcasting, has been operating now for more than two decades. In that time they have been providing subscription satellite TV and digital television services to the British public non stop, bringing the latest technological innovations and TV broadcasting trends into British homes as well as promoting Sport, Movies and imported American TV shows to a new viewership.
Sky also offers broadband and phone services and have championed the digital switchover. It's easy to look at a huge corporation as it is today and see the obviousness of its success, but if we take a look back at the history of Sky we can see how the evolution of satellite television has been an interesting and not necessarily straightforward one.
The Beginnings
Sky is a subscription TV services that uses satellites in order to broadcast its programming. In 1989 the first of the Astra satellites was placed in orbit and Sky's revolutionary service began. The 1990s saw this first lone satellite being joined by several more. These early years saw financial problems, with the News Corporation owned Sky Television, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, merging with British Satellite Broadcasting in November of 1990, an allegiance which confirmed the company's continued operation and which is still strong today.
The main benefits of the merger for Sky was the acquisition of more advertising contracts, which in their early days were hard to come by and the cause of the financial troubles in the first place. This merger also formed the main Sky network of channels that exists today, with Sky Sports and Sky Movies resulting from the deal.
The Digital Age
In 1997, the satellite Astra 2A was launched to support digital broadcasting and by 2001 Sky had discontinued their analogue service in favour of digital TV. Digital technology brought with it the potential for hundreds of TV and radio stations to be broadcast to an ever-expanding customer base. Initially this service was branded as Sky Digital, although this name is no longer used. 2001 also saw another innovation, the Sky+ service which is still around today, consisting of a set top box with a built in hard drive which allowed customers to record and store programs without the need for tapes or DVDs.
Sky+ has grown in popularity and decreased in price, and set top box hard drive recorders have also been made by third party companies and copied by other subscription TV services.
Sky TV Today
Since the launch of its Sky+HD service in 2006, Sky has continued to offer the most comprehensive and flexible selection of digital TV channels and telecommunications services to old and new customers alike. Though their sports coverage has been somewhat diminished from the days of its early dominance, you should still expect that any new product introduced by Sky will in the coming years become adopted and adapted by other companies looking to emulate their success.
Sky have also recently moved away from their satellite roots and into the world of online on demand television services and channels, offering live TV without the need for a satellite dish, and with over 1 million customers signed up to their Sky broadband service this is surely a good move.
