THE HISTORY OF SKY TV CHRISTOPHER O’NEILL

BACKGROUND Sky television was originally entitled Satellite television Ltd Sky television plc was launched by Rupert Murdock on 5 th February 1989, it was Rupert's attempt to take full advantage of the new satellite technology.

TROUBLED START British satellite broadcasting was sky’s main rivals, but both of these companies ended up losing a lot of money in the early days as a result of lack of popularity and technology, this made both companies come together, the result of the merger was British Sky Broadcasting.

PREMIER LEAGUE FOOTBALL During the autumn of 1991, talks were held for premier league football, Rupert Murdock described sport as a bettering ram and offered 304 million for a monopoly over premier league football. This led to ITV whop were the current holders of premier league football to file a law suit against sky, believing that Murdock’s newspapers had influenced the deals and that their 262 million bid details had been leaked before the decision was taken. There are still many disputes over football rights involving sky sports to this day.

SKY MULTICHANNELS In September 1993 sky multichannels was launched, sky multichannels included some free to air programmes such as MTV Europe and sky news, but also had channels that you had to pay for such as sky one, this new idea lead to sky being in 3.5 million households by mid New channels were introduced every year to sky multichannels.

SKY DIGITAL The next big thing to happen to sky was sky digital on 1 st October 1998, the key selling points for sky digital was better picture and sound quality. The growth of digital television led to the closure of sky multichannels by September the new digital service would now only be called sky. By 2005, the number of digital subscribers was at 7.8 million

SKY PLUS Sky+ was launched in early 2002, it allows the user to record, pause and instantly rewind live TV.

SKY+ HD Sky + HD was launched on 22 May 2006, 2 years after launch it was branded sky HD, the service required a Sky HD digibox and HD ready TV, as of 2014 the number of Sky+ HD boxes currently stands at at 10 million

REFERENCES television