New Sky channels: Crime, Comedy, Documentaries, Nature

No, Friends is staying on Comedy Central for another year. Sky Media (who handle sales for Viacom) are seeking new sponsorship to run from Jan-Dec 2020.

UK Gold, the Only Fools and Horses channel.

Actually interesting how many shows they've made about Morcambe and Wise the last few years (there's a new one with Lenny Henry running right now), yet they never actually show the episodes themselves.

Last year I was in the US I spent a couple of hours watching the Decades channel in my hotel room, I watched The Hooneymooners, Dark Shadows, The Abbott and Costello show, and they ran trailers for The Twilight Zone, I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, Car 54 Where Are You amongst others, if there was a channel like that in the UK, I'd be hooked!

Prime Video have a surprising selection of 1940s-1960s American television shows. I'm unlikely to sit through more than one or two episodes but I just find it interesting to watch programmes from an era that's largely ignored, especially in this country.

Totally atrocious indexing and search though, I’m getting more and more frustrated as programming that’s been available for ages suddenly pops out at random on the ‘home screen’. AZP are not alone with this, Apple’s TV catalogue is as chaotic. I’ve not tried Netflix recently but expect the same is true there too. BritBox is exhibiting chaotic trends too which is worrying with such a currently small offering.

There are niche movie channels (Retro Movies and Talking Pictures) to name but two that are happy to run archive material from the 1960s and before (Talking Pictures buys and schedules stuff from a shed apparently!) - sometimes these will run archive US material that isn't a film, ie where there's an awkward gap.

It is a shame there isn't an audience over here for shows of that era of this country's catalogue but of course back in the 1990s that's what UK Gold was doing at the time. But of course commercial pressures seem to have dictated otherwise.

Yes I agree, randomly the first two seasons of Home and Away popped up on my Amazon home screen yesterday

I know we should take these things with a pinch of salt but still though this was interesting if true.

“We have been told today by Media Boy Sources that they have seen information that said Sky are set to rebrand two Sky own channels as "Sky Action" and "Sky Drama".
Our scources are thinking Sky Two will become Sky Drama but are not sure about Sky Action.”

Post source: https://www.cableforum.uk/board/showpost.php?p=36022256&postcount=82

The problem is they already have Sky Cinema Action, and Sky Sports Action, so it's beginning to look as though they are lacking in creative thought when it comes to naming new channels.

I'm hoping Curb Your Enthusiasm will be pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Maybe it's not a Sky channel that's rebranding, but one of the other Comcast owned channels? Like how Universal TV is being replaced by Sky Comedy. Therefore, Sky Action could be what is currently Syfy.

I think that would be a bad move, as SyFy is a recognised brand. However, as you say they're replacing Universal which I thought was equally recognisable.


If they were to keep the same programming, then really 'Sky Action' doesn't accurately describe what's in the tin.

To be fair, neither does the name Syfy, as it does show some programmes that aren't sci-fi. But I was just speculating anyway. It could be any of their channels, assuming the info there is true.