Sky TV's Comedy Channel of the early 90s - why did it end?

I always found Sky TV's (or more accurately BSkyB's) Comedy Channel very entertaining and I can remember that in its first few months (late 91 - early 92) it showed a few classic British comedies that (I think) had previously been on BSB, before abruptly stopping all of them and replacing them with American series.

Some real American classics were also shown on The Comedy Channel, including Green Acres (which I find hilarious - it is so surreal), F Troop, The Lucy Show, The Addams Family and Hogan's Heroes. These carried on being shown right until late summer 1992 when for some reason, BSkyB announced they were scrapping The Comedy Channel and adding a new movie channel, Sky Movies Gold, instead. I have often wondered why they decided to launch a classic movie channel and do away with The Comedy Channel.

Most of those American classics haven't been seen on British TV again.

I was surprised when I saw old listings on TV Ark for the early Sky Channel from its cable era . The channel was showing Green Acres as far back as 1987. Only two series were ever shown on terrestrial UK television, so the series isn't that well known to a lot of viewers.

I'm not sure whether it existed to acknowledge any of the contracts BSB had in place, similar to the way that Sky Arts appeared on Marcopolo at the weekends on Sky News. Maybe poor ratings lead to it's closure, but I cant help but think UK Gold might have been a factor of The Comedy Channel closing down, as said many BBC programmes appeared on Comedy which later appeared on UK Gold, leaving Sky without any worthwhile content for its own channel. I can't imagine Comedy making much money for Sky in those days, at that time Sky only made real money through Sports and Movies, which was probably their biggest seller and earner.

I know what you mean about the way after the BBC programmes were scrapped from Comedy the channel's content might not have been considered worthwhile by Sky, as I don't know if they saw a channel with exclusively US comedies (and some that were quite obscure in this country) very feasible. It is a shame in some ways, though, as some of the older US comedies haven't been seen in the UK since.

I also recall, in Sky One's earlier days, that they showed the 70s comedy series Maude (with future Golden Girls Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan) on weekday mornings at it seems that some of these programmes on Sky One were often shown as fillers, given the timeslots.

I can't help but feel like the closing sentence in this paragraph goes some way as to validating the previous; with hundreds of channels on satellite/cable now pumping out whatever they can get hold of for no money there simply can't be an audience for them.

The one thing I remember about The Comedy Channel was its fish tank test card.

Of course, Paramount Comedy Channel had an equally memorable test card with a giant chicken in the middle of a motorway.

In fact, I've found a pic of the Comedy Channel test card, thanks to TV Ark:http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/images/skytv/sky_images/comedychannel/comedych_startup1991b.jpg

and here's a video of the Paramount test card - although there were variations on this, it either had test tone or car honking SFX. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrKuH8_yKPY&p=A082BA401ACBAB31&playnext=1&index=55

I know exactly what you mean.

I remember the Comedy Channel test card as well! Thanks for the link to the Paramount test card - I hadn't heard of this.

Here's the test card in video & start up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUxmSFxness

That's probably it. UK Gold's launch isn't the only time a channel launch caused Sky to lose programmes. The launch of Fox Kids in 1996 destroyed Sky One's Undun slot to the point that the branding was dropped.

I didn't realise Fox Kids also caused Sky to lose programmes. I can't really remember the Undun slot, the only kids series I can really remeber from Sky is the DJ Kat Show.

Alot of kids shows ( including Power rangers which was hugh at the ) from SKY one went to Fox kids, that's the point when SKY one stopped being all round gerenal channel , was this not also the point when News update stopped being shown on sky one aswell

The problem was when Fox Kids was launched with all of Sky1's old Childrens programmes, Sky2 was launched aswell which left a massive gap within Sky1's schedule, which was probably the reason why Sky2 was pulled after a year.

If you have a look on my YouTube channel there's clips of News updates on Sky1 as late as Summer 1999, and I think they stopped shortly afterwards.