The Simpsons in the UK

24 was on BBC2 was it not?

Only the first two series then Sky took it exclusively.

Same thing happened to Lost, on Channel 4.

VIewing figures declined for Lost on 4 in the second season, so I believe they had the opportunity to effectively get out at that point, which was where Sky came along with the proverbial cheque book.

Sky did this a lot in the 2000's, hovering up things that were successful on the terrestrial channels - can only presume the terrestrials bought them on season by season basis, whereas Sky just wave their wallet in the air and get past, present and future rights to all and sundry.

Also happened with House and Prison Break on Channel 5.

Think it also happened later on with Glee (when it was huge) on E4.

Remember when BBC signed a deal for Heroes which lasted as long as the show ran for, which I seem to recall really pissed off Sky when they tried to poach it.

Generally it was two seasons initially and frankly in most cases for shows that did move to Sky the FTA channel got the better years out of them.

24 was shown on BBC Choice a week ahead of BBC Two, presumably one of many incentives for digital take-up.

They pulled the last episode of the first series from BBC Choice after BBC Two fell a week behind because of overrunning snooker coverage.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/aug/12/broadcasting.bbc

That was such a non-story, I remember scoffing at that article at the time. I love the quotes in there, especially from the bloke who had enough money to cancel a holiday but not enough to buy a video. This has been pretty standard practice, they showed the next episode on BBC Choice straight after the BBC2 screening, but didn't do that for the last episode so everyone could see it at once. That's the choice you make when you decide to watch it "early". The snooker bit isn't really correct either, they just took it off for a week for the snooker final, as they do with loads of other shows.

The mention of Murder One, which they were also dredging up in there, was a bit of a cock-up, in that the Beeb appeared to have miscounted and with three episodes to go they had to take it off for the Olympics, but that is always going to be a problem on a mixed genre channel like the Beeb.

Actually this reminds me that in that first series of 24, there was a cock-up on BBC Choice one week where they inadvertantly played the end credits voice-over a few minutes before the end of the episode. I remember this because our old pal Dom Robinson was convinced this was deliberate and new BBC policy and started a thread on some forum slagging the Beeb off at great length, refusing to believe it wasn't deliberate despite umpteen people trying to correct him, and then mentioning it every five minutes for weeks on end. Happy days.

One of the other memorable poaches was when Sky poached Man Men from the Beeb, and Media Guardian got the director of Sky Atlantic to write a piece defending it - https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/apr/19/mad-men-viewing-figures - which is remarkable for how desperately they try and spin it, while avoiding saying "we've poached it because we want to make loads of money out of it", which was of course the only reason they did it.

This reminds me of when Sky One went off Virgin in 2007 due to a dispute, and they had lots of complaints that it meant they couldn't see the new series of Lost, and the boss of Virgin did an interview where he basically said "We've still got the old series and the new series is crap anyway". Which was probably correct, but I'm not sure it was really the most diplomatic answer.

That was when they changed Sky News to "Sky Snooze" in the EPG- how mature.