Sky 1 to become home for all homegrown content

I miss the "Onc" era Sky 1.

From a presentation point of view, the brand had all of its personality ripped away in Feb 2011. Retrieving some of that would be a good place to start.

The thing was vm just didn't care about the channel. To be fair sky has sorted out some of the channels. Yes some have gone but the damage was done.

I'm not sure what it says about the 'Living' brand or what it says about me, but I associate it with three programmes from across the years - Charmed, Will & Grace and The Biggest Loser USA.

As for the channels they do need tidying up. I think Living has been lost ever since it distanced itself from the female skewed audience. It now is a mismatch of many different things without any strong branding behind them.

Due to Atlantic's presence with the fantastic HBO catalogue, Living would be known as the home of US acquisitions that are not good enough for Atlantic. As for Sky 1 being home of homegrown content, does this mean that they will be moving every American series to Living?

EDIT: I've answered my question.This is from MrOmega on Digital Spy's forum:


So not much is changing bar Living losing any original shows that it did have - not that many by looking through the planner.

To add my two cents into the frame. What's the point of Sky Living? Or at least the name? It's only since Sky took over the channel that it has become some some of rehash for US imports and slightly female skewed content. Living of years gone by is more akin now to the likes of TLC and ITVBe.

When we signed up for NYNEX many many years ago Sky 1 was an exciting channel that used to have tons of decent content, it has simply just lost its way. I still watch it, only for Simpsons repeats, I almost never watch Sky Living.

You must be going back 20 years for that. Dj cat, Sally Jones, and the other one. It lost its way around 10 years ago. Challenge has never been so good.

That depends whether you like TNA and Sky's Gladiators over the ITV version.

Wheel of fortune, blockbusters, price is right, and even millionaire

If Sky Living is to consist of only US imports, then perhaps it could (or should) be rebranded as Sky Atlantic 2.

I agree about Challenge though ... bar the promos for shows on Sky branded channels during the adbreaks, you'd hardly know it was a channel owned by BSkyB. I was surprised they didn't rebrand it as Sky Games, or similar, when they took control of it!

The imports of Living are of a different quality to those on Sky Atlantic though - essentially network vs cable shows. I can't see Sky 1 ditching The Flash and Arrow too - whatever the focus of Sky Living is on that given day they'd be pretty out of place there. There is no talk either of original shows from Sky Atlantic moving to Sky 1.

All this chatter about channels merging or closing is daft. They all ultimately exist to make Sky's portfolio of channels looks stronger to potential customers and to make money out of their archive through advertising, hence why Sky 2 and Sky Living It continue to exist.

Sky Living as a brand can easily continue to exist without original commissions, hardly anyone watched their British shows anyway and their American dramas all have an obvious female skew so the fit the legacy of the brand at least.

I'm glad that they're focusing their spend on Sky1, Atlantic has arguably surpassed Sky1 in terms of brand recognition and it needs to reaffirm who it wants to target fast. The schedule is far too much of a mish mash at the moment and I think their current 8pm fact ent commissioning strategy is very poor.

Would you say UKTV has a strong portfolio? It'd make sense if they kept Bravo and Trouble as they had specialised demographics, but they've retained channels that have ended up painfully bland.

It's not something Sky haven't tried with Sky One twenty times in the last 25 years. They really don't seem to have the interest in it any more. In the 1990s Sky One was the second most watched channel in my house behind RTE One. These days I hardly switch it on except for Modern Family and Moone Boy (which has finished). A lot of the types of programme which would have aired on Sky One back in the day are now on E4, Fox, Sky Atlantic (which Sky won't make avialable to cable viewers) or elsewhere. In fact part of the point of Sky Atlantic seems to have been to deliberately canibalise Sky One's audience on the grounds that it was too widely available and give traditional Sky One viewers a reason to switch to Sky Digital.