Sky Sports News HQ

This makes so much sense, it's shocking Sky didn't think of it...then again. I can however see why Sky have moved the channel, to make it the first channel Sky Sports viewers see on this EPG...before they reach the Gold. However I agree with everyone else in that the name is awful, just Sky Sports HQ would be better as alexhduk stated.

Sky don't seem willing to use the x00 slots on their EPG very often, and not really to any great effect - and only once for the start of a genre.

It's only used on:
* 200 (part way through the entertainment section)
* 700 (Movie Previews - rolling barker channel)
* 800 (part way through the international section)
* 900 (start of the soft porn section)

Surely 400 would be an ideal slot for this channel if they want to give it a high profile. Putting it at 401 is illogical, simply because of the effect on the EPG slots for the other well-established channels.

The new studio looks very nice: but the name is clunky (as has been said) and will probably last as long as SkySports.comTV.

I wonder if the original plan was to rebrand as 'Sky Sports HQ' but they bottled it so ended up with this silly compromise, the name won't last anyway so they might as well not bother. What would be logical would be 'Sky Sports HQ' as something of shop window on 400 before the other channels, as has pretty much been said.

it will be interesting to see how on earth they fit the channel name on a Sky box, I think the current is something like Sky SportNws HD, it could be something like Sky SptNws HQ HD, but maybe that wont fit.

SSNews HQ HD

There was a Sky Sports Centre for years, a nightly news programme on Sky Sports 1 that I suppose you would call the forerunner of Sky Sports News. I'm more of the opinion that the original idea was to rename it Sky Sports HQ but that it was blocked somewhere along the way, probably on the grounds that they'd lose a lot of the good work the Sky Sports News name has built up over the years and that, with the EPG change too, it wouldn't take much for some casual viewers to think that Sky Sports News had actually closed down.

Long after Sky Sports Centre was dropped from Sky Sports 1/2, the programme continued on Sky Sports News at 6pm on weeknights for a while, I think it finally got dropped when SSN rebranded in 2003.

Just a memory refresher
From 1997 (music sounds similar to ESPN SportsCenter from the 90s)

Producer on the first clip of Sky Sports Centre, Barney Francis, is now Managing Director of Sky Sports.

Do agree with you.

Have wondered why Sky One was never allocated "100" ?

Sky Sports F1 confirm on air they'll be on channel 407 by the time of the next race.

Haven't they always tried to place themselves as the unofficial channel 6?