Sky is celebrating its 20th birthday; 20 splendid years of glamorous success. Widely known world over, Britain’s top ranking, one of the most innovative and progressive line of TV channels, Sky is boundless.
It is UK’s no.1 pay TV provider entertaining nearly 9 million subscribers in the UK and Ireland. Sky channel was first launched in 1989 with 4 channels. BSkyB was formed in 1990 with the merger of two channel giants BSB and SkyTV on 50- 50 basis. The two rivals surprised the television industry by becoming one.
Dumping its analogue service in 2001, it began its digital services becoming the first TV service all over the world running only on digital grounds. Its service provides an immense range of entertainment to its subscribers with 400 channels. These channels are a source to providing access to sports, entertainment, and news.
The list of channels include Discovery, Bravo, Sky One, BBC-owned the Children’s Channel and UK Gold, the Family Channel, Sky News, Nick at Nite, VH-1, U.K. Living and MTV, as well as the Viacom-BSkyB joint venture Nickelodeon U.K. and a BSkyB partnership with the QVC home shopping network.
In 1998 the company was a sudden success with its digital television service offering 140 channels then. It sold around 100,000 digiboxes in just 30 days, which made the company the most fast growing digital platform.
The company also gave away free digiboxes, or set-top boxes, and minidishes for promotional purposes. This idea turned up as another big success adding more stars to the shoulders; they gained 1.2 million new subscribers just within ten months.
Many other interactive services were also launched such as Sky Sports Extra allowing the viewers to opt for instant replay, highlights and statistics of matches. These options are still new for many countries with other TV services.
These interactive services were launched back in 2000. In 2002, the company developed a Freeview, capturing a quarter of all British households, offering DTT; digital terrestrial television.
Sky has always been on the advancing front. Still progressive as ever, Sky is going beyond limits and ready to excel all the limits to be a maestro.
It is now working to be more than a mere satellite platform. Jumping from 4 channels to 400 is a great success and indeed a result of endless efforts and hard work. Such a success is the outcome of a dedicated teamwork and focused goals. Thumbs up to Sky!
Related Stories
Virgin Media says that it will launch four new HD channels during next year. The company has just launched its 50Mb broadband service in UK and thi...
An online TV listing has just been launched by Freeview that will allow user to plan for their viewing of their favorite shows. This TV guide can b...
Microsoft is ready to unveil its new syncing service at Mobile World Congress this year. With its SkyBox, Microsoft seems to tell the world that wh...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tags: entertainment, skytv, sports, tv channels
