Sky's Branding

They've got a new series tonight called The Sky Sports Years, starting with 1991, which is on at 6.30pm on Sky Sports 1/HD1 and repeated at 10.30pm too, on the promo for that they had the 1991 logo on screen.

I'll be setting my DVD for that.

Ten mins into that show you get the full Sky Sports 1991 ident

So, I think by now, we're all familiar with the new Sky Atlanic logo plastered on billboards everwhere:

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/thumb/d/d3/Sky_Atlantic.svg/250px-Sky_Atlantic.svg.png

And the new Sky Living logos have been going around for a little while now:

http://data.skyprogrammeinformation.co.uk/images/trad.gif http://data.skyprogrammeinformation.co.uk/images/tras.gif http://data.skyprogrammeinformation.co.uk/images/tra2.gif

But I've not seen this new Sky1 logo before:
http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101220193860/logopedia/images/thumb/7/78/Sky_1_HD_2011.png/250px-Sky_1_HD_2011.png

It's all going a bit corporate again, like it was in the 90s.

Whilst the Sky LIVING logo has been posted on here before, I'm not sure anyone has shown the LIVINGit and LIVING Loves logos. There has been some debate (over on Digital Spew) about whether they were being closed because of the lack of information about a rebrand.

Far from closing them, it seems they are even going to launch a Sky LIVINGit HD channel (on Tuesday 1 Feb from the programme schedule).


I quite liked the corporate era of Sky logos back in the 90s: and you can understand their desire to do it again after buying up the VMtv channels and creating a new entertainment channel.

I'm also pleased they've moved away from the early 2000s notion of having 'Art School live action videos' with a logo simply slapped on top of them.

In a world of ever-increasing channels, the brand identity is all important: although UKTV obviously don't agree, given their decision in 2008 to remove any real corporate identity to their channels, other than the make the logos round.

So, the big question remaining is what'll happen to Challenge? Will it carry the Sky logo and/or Corporate style? Will it even be refreshed before the Freeview launch?

Personally, I'd love for Challenge to be rebranded. It's stale, cheap and is in need of a half decent look. To be honest, I'll be surprised if it isn't renamed Sky Challenge seeing as the remaining VMTV channels are getting a Sky prefix.

In fact, is Living TV Group going to be kept if all of the channels (bar Challenge, for now) are going to be Sky branded? Seems a bit silly having one lot of Sky-branded channels operated by Sky whilst another lot is operated under another name.

Newp - already their website redirects to Sky's.

If, as it appears, that 'Living TV Group' is to be fully incorporated into BSkyB Limited (rather than the plc holding company), then perhaps the delay was for corporation tax reasons.

I'm not sure when the accounting year end date is for each company, but they would need to be realigned for tax purposes: with perhaps the assets of the closed channels being written-off against tax due before they were fully incorporated.

I'm not an accountant, so I'm sure someone has better knowledge of these sorts of things. A company doesn't pay tax if they can avoid it.

Im surprised Sky are keeping the name LIVING LOVES. Sounds a bit cheap and downmarket for Sky tbh.

It reminds me abit of Sky Soap from the old analogue days, which (despite low viewing figures) lasted almost 5 years!

http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/images/skytv/sky_images/sky_soap_images/sky_soap_intro1993_a.jpg

http://thetvroom.com/images/pool-4/415/main-516.jpg

(Images in public domain via Google)

What does this mean?

The images are from TV-Ark and The TV Room. If you are going to take the time to give credit for the images, why give it to Google?

Probably because that is where he got them from?