The early days of Sky Television

I was thinking recently about the way Satellite TV had radically changed over the years. I always remember how, unlike the huge number of channels nowadays, there were only seven (I think) English Language channels on Satellite when my family first had a Sky system. There were at least fifteen German Language channels (one showed The Simpsons and it was quite strange seeing the series dubbed into German at the time!)

I can also recall how Sky One relied on many American shows in its schedules. As well as then-contemporary sitcoms, they showed 70s US sitcoms in the morning just as fillers. There was also Sky's Comedy Channel which showed some real American classics as well as a few more recent and sometimes quite dull comedies.

I think Sky began to change in 1993 when it introduced its Multi-Channels package with channels such as Nickelodeon and Bravo (then an excellent vintage TV channel, of course).

There was also the Children's Channel which often showed 70s and 80s UK shows as well as some really obscure Eastern European programmes. How things have changed...

I think you have to appreciate that there were technical limitations with the old Astra 1, don't forget at the time when Sky launched there was only one official satellite that was allocated for the UK, that was Marcopolo which was used to BSB. Sky got around that by using Astra which was based in Luxembourg, but as you say it had to share with many countries. We never had Sky Analogue (we had Cable) but I remember from people who did have it they do remember the foreign channels.

Stations like The Childrens Channel and ScreenSport had been available sometime before Sky launched, I guess putting them on Sky would obviously help their reach within the UK, prior to that with Satellite only being available to the lucky few and Cable which was only available to only a few areas.

We only started watching Sky regularly from 1997 and I do admit I kind of wish we were still in that situation now, granted I prefer today's technology like EPGs, HD, VOD, but I think the quality of programming was better then. I do think that was also the right time too as the BBC was strong, ITV was still very strong, as were Channel 4 and Sky were making a profit by this point.

There were two Marcopolo satellites - the second was required under the official IBA license as a backup! As far as I'm aware, it never served a channel to the public. I suspect that if the service continued beyond 1992 Marcopolo 2 would quickly have been brought in to use.

I agree with your comment on quality of programming; I miss Diamond Cable for that reason. I accept a certain amount of this is due to not being 9 any more, but channels like Nickelodeon and Challenge are not what they once were - they both have live presenters and a good range of programming. Now half of Nickelodeon's (and Disney Channel's) output is completely formulaic schoolkid by day/popstar by night stuff. Do children not appreciate variety any more?

And let's not get started on UK Gold!

I'm pretty sure that both were used with the 5 channels split between them, the plan being that if one failed some would stay on air and the others would move over.

They originally only had a franchise/license for 3 channels, but when no-one bid for the other 2 they got them.

I still wonder what would have happened if either:

A: both companies did not need to merged

B: BSB technology was used instead of pal.

I think the general assumption was that both companies wouldn't have survived individually, many people learned from the VHS Betamax war of the 1980s, ie they decided to wait to see which format would win before they'd splash out the cash, certainately that was my decision before I bought a Blu-Ray Player. Don't forget the economic state in 1990 was quite similar to 2010 really, people weren't going to fork out hundreds of pounds for a piece of kit that could become obsolete within no time, and the idea of Pay TV didn't have everybody coninvced either at this point.

Even if BSB had survived then I think Digital Satellite would have killed it off anyway, as someone else said earlier if BSB was successful then I guess they would have had to open up the back-up space on the Marcopolo satellite for expansion, which Astra and Cable was doing a lot of through the whole of Europe during the 1990s.

BSB was owned by some ITV stations (I think Granada was one of them) and some electrical manufacturers who really didn't have deep pockets, they were out of pocket by several hundred million pounds before a single programme had even been broadcast, where as with Sky, Rupert Murdoch knew it wasn't going to be easy and he was willing to run it at a loss for the first 3 or 4 years, even then it didn't turn a profit until 1993 or so, and tat was mainly thanks to Rupert splashing out on the rights to the Premier League in 1992.

If BSB had been round in 1992 then I think they would have put in a counter bid for the Premier League, they tried to do so in 1988, but ITV beat them to it, I think how different things could have been, but I think it was quite unlikely that two different satellite systems couldn't survive, only one could win, and that was Sky.

I had heard that The Children's Channel had been available for a few years before, but I noticed that, from what I recall, there wasn't any new or original programming on the channel - it was either UK 70s or 80s shows, a few American cartoons and obscure European shows. I wonder if this was because The Children's Channel didn't have much money - especially in its earlier days.

I had forgotten of course that the reason there were so many German language channels was because of Sky sharing Astra with other countries.

I can also recall a German language channel called Teleclub that needed a separate decoder to watch and its scrambled picture looked different to the scrambled screen on Sky Movies and The Movie Channel. There were the Scandinavian TV3 and TV1000 channels as well that were D2 Mac and were so scrambled that they just appeared as "snow" on the screen

Arnt most of the German channels on Sky astra thing, the proper FTA

If you mean on Astra 1/ Sky Analogue then I think they had to be as a lot of the stations were the German PSB ones like the regional ARD channels and the national ZDF channel. I'm sure this conversation has been said before but in Germany they don't tend to do the mid-pay TV like we do in the UK, they have several FTA cable/satellite channels like most of the ProSiebenSat.1 channels and the RTL spin-offs, the only pay TV that was common was on premium products such as films on the now rebranded Premiere.

We never had such luxury on Cable, we had TV5, then for a while they used to show TV5 until 8pm and then for some reason switched it over to Sat1 until about 4/5am, although I found Sat1 interesting as it had more US shows on there and some rather rude material that you wouldn't have seen on TV5, for which when you're 12/13 years old is a good thing(!)

When Sky first began broadcasting from the Astra satellite in February 1989, Sky advertised themselves as having four channels they called "theirs":
Sky Channel (later renamed Sky One)
Sky News
Sky Movies
Eurosport

There were other English language channels on Astra 1 too, not belonging to Sky:
Discovery
Lifestyle
Screensport
The Children's Channel

In addition there were foreign channels, taking the total number to 16. Does anyone know what the foreign ones were?

According to Wikipedia, who I have no reason to doubt in this case, the opening lineup for Astra 1A was:
Screensport
RTL
TV3 Sweden
Eurosport
Lifestyle/TCC
Sat.1
TV1000
Sky One
Eurosport
3sat
FilmNet
Sky News
RTL4
Pro7
MTV Europe
Sky Movies

Thegeek - from memory, that list is accurate.

I must have been one of the very, very few people to have watched Sky Channel before Astra. It was on Swindon Cable and, honestly, was the most godawful channel ever ...

Make your own minds up if it's changed in the past 30-odd years!