Sky Movies Rebrand To Sky Cinema

Why do they make popup channels if they're gonna be a common thing? Why not make a sort of gestalt channel that can be used for these types of things instead of replacing channels for a bit at a time?

The loss of the linear channel will only affect a minimum of customers. The movies from the affected channel are usually available to Sky and NOW TV customers via VoD.

Personally I like the themed channels as it encourages me to watch movies I wouldn't normally watch on Sky Cinema.

With the new enhanced sound only on downloaded versions, we won't even bother with the linear channels any more.

I find the temporary channels to be pretty pointless. It hasn't stopped them from showing all the Harry Potter films in one go without having to rebrand the channel Sky Movies Harry Potter.

They did rename a channel to Sky Movies Harry Potter though. Last October in fact.
http://www.sky.com/tv/show/movies-news/article/sky-movies-harry-potter-launches-this-october
http://www.asset1.net/tv/pictures/movie/sm-harry-potter-do-not-publish-2015/SM-Harry-Potter-main-LB-1.jpg

Presumably the popup channels are to provide a spot of variety and lump the chosen films all together in one place as opposed to spreading them out across the other channels as per usual, though in the case of Harry Potter they are still airing at least one or two of the films (in order) on Sky Cinema Family every night for at least the next week.

No doubt 304 will become Sky Cinema Christmas towards the back end of November and remain so into 2017 when it'll probably morph back into Greats for a while and then into Sky Cinema Valentine, like it did this year.

Interestingly, Sky Cinema Disney was listed in the BARB viewing summary as the most popular out of all the Sky Cinema channels for May 2016 (and that was the case for all bar two months in 2016). They must be doing something right.

Go figure. I'm sure they've still had a whole day of a particular series or franchise without rebranding the channel though.

Probably to trial a themed format without changing the channel name before they started with the themed branding.

There is also the commercial reasoning for the latest pop-up channel with the release of the third Star Trek reboot film coinciding.

While it's fair to say that NOW TV and the Sky VoD service will have all the Star Trek movies, it's still a viable thing to take over a linear channel for a couple of weeks to advertise a new film.

Did Sky not buy up the rights to James Bond and Star Wars just before new films were to be released then dump them afterwards?

Dumped is probably the wrong word, but for a short period.

Sky still hold Star Wars rights, all except Episode 7 are available on demand.

Sky Cinema Star Wars will reappear when The Force Awakens premieres.

Sorry, I meant James Bond and Harry Potter. Sky will have a few years of making money out of the Star Wars franchise yet no doubt with new movies every year for 5 more at least.