New Sky channels: Crime, Comedy, Documentaries, Nature

Well the launch of Sky Documentaries was a damp squib. I know new channel launches aren't such a big thing nowadays but there wasn't even a 'Welcome to Sky Documentaries' announcement or anything, just the announcer saying about McMillions available on demand.
Also think the ident would have looked better if the logo opened up at the same time as the image

The idents for Documentaries doesn't look bad. Bit too simplistic tho

I'll admit Sky Nature's idents are stunning!

Totally agree about Sky Nature's ident, its beautiful. Hope there are more in the collection

Better keep an eye out then

It as much as you’ve said... a new linear channel launch is no big deal and it’s unlikely many (If any) people are going to be sat down waiting for it to open as in days past.

These days, the home & landing pages on Sky Q, Sky HD and Now TV is where the launch begins - They want folks to see that channel brand tile and delve into that.

Are we getting any updates to the logos on News or Sports? Or are they on hold due to the Pandemic?

NOW TV has reversed versions of two of the logos in their guide. ‘nature’ is in green text on white and ‘H | HISTORY’ has the ‘HISTORY’ text in black on white.

Sky Documentaries has the ‘regular’ white text on red background.

On hold.

Though looking through some Behance pages on the Sky Crime and Sky Comedy branding today, it seems the expected presumption about the eventual Sky Sports logo is looking to be right... the Sky logo adopting the blue

I can't help thinking all these channels are thining out content even futher.
For instance, whilst McMillions is more logically at home on Docs, that would aired originally on Atlantic.

Elsewhere, I notice that the 'Discovering: --' Movie career apprasial documentaries are now on Doc, but they've been raided from Arts. Urban Secrets and Richard E Grant's best hotels in the world already aired to death on Sky Atlantic/Sky One now finds a new home on Docs.

It's similar to the Atlantic > Comedy leap for Real Time and Last Week Tonight. Raiding Atlantic, so they can air yet another repeat of Game Of Thrones doesn't seem a good use of starting up new channels, and herding content over to that.

If new content replacing the slots previously filled adding extra choice, then I'd have no problem. But right now, the strategy is not quite right.

Also I noticed Sky Cinema will adopt similar branding as well.
As for Sky News, it's uncertain

The strategy is actually pretty sound because the linear channels themselves are not the focus here... they’re simply there to service customers who cannot or will not use on demand - the broadening of their portfolio under more genre based channel brands is very much a strategy based around streaming AND a future where Sky may have to rely on themselves more if carriage partners go their own way.

By widening their channel brands it helps them curate their on demand selection (more important now that box sets is part of the basic pack) and gives them options to add more shows - for example if they are indeed going to be showing content from HBO Max and Peacock, they need more brands for those shows to sit under given how broad some of those shows will be. Plus if Sky Arts is going FTA I would expect that to be more niche going forward (hence more of their factual and biographical content moving to Docs) and with fewer comedy and docs on Atlantic, that channel becomes far more vital to be a more focused home for their own premium drama of which we expect to see more.

The linear channels only really need 2-3 of prime time content a night to be viable - more on demand viewing is the real goal (especially as Sky/NBCU develop more sophisticated ad tech) and that’s where they’ll want their customers to go to first.