The moment that Murdoch took over. It was exciting at the time but now looking back it was the defining moment of the Americanisation of our tv and news culture.
My Dad said Sky News was unmissable back in the 90s. That it was groundbreaking, especially during Gulf War and Gulf War 2 and 9/11. That has obviously changed. Journalism in general in this country is now in the gutter.
I remember this well. My late father and I put up the satellite dish a month before the launch. We found it amazing to be watching the Sky test signals from space. It was a real event to watch the first broadcast. We had the Amstrad SRD100 receiver. Me remembering the model number just proves how monumental this was.
What strikes me is how much slower people spoke back then. Kay Burley like all newsreaders today speaks quite fast, but back then it's like she's telling us a story and they all spoke like that. I actually find that old style more engaging.
My Aunt was the first person I knew that got Sky, And this was a few months after its launch in 1989. I remember visiting as kid and was amazed! lol It's where I discovered The Simpsons on SKY One, I watched the first episode at Christmas '89... Oh, the memories 😔
My mate who I grew up with in Hyde, Manchester.... got SKY when it first came out at this time. Safe to say he became the most popular kid overnight. To be honest it was unbelievable to be able to watch satellite TV! We were round his house watching all sorts...Sport, Movies,......and of course.... RTL. 😎😁
My mate, who was also my next door neighbour had Sky Television when it came out in 1989. He used to tape the WWF wrestling and football matches for me. As well as let me watch the England test cricket tour of the West Indies in 1990.
This wasn't the launch of Sky. This was the launch of "Sky Television" a four channel package they were offering. Sky Channel began in 1984, 5 years before this. Murdoch was involved from 1983 when he took a controlling stake in what was then "Satellite Television Limited"
We never had cable or sky. The collest I got to it was in 2005 with a freeview box. I remember in the early 90s going round to my uncles in Greenford. He had cable, before Sky and showed us the feature of seeing all the channels on one screen. All playing in their little window then you selected which one you wanted. I was amazed.
i got sky in 1991 the best channels for me was the syfi channel and tnt movies , i was amazed back then that i could watch television from abroad despite not knowing what they were saying mostly .
If you remember those Sky One schedules there was no bloody quality in any of them. I do wonder if they hadn’t got those rights to the football in 1992 (a meeting that should have forbid Alan Sugar from attending!) would it ever have been a success?
If Murdoch would've been in it for the long haul, then yes, if no, I would've thought the government would've stepped in and then carved it up for the BBC and ITV to eat. It wasn't just football, believe it or not, the WWF (yes, American wrestling) was one of the most watched things on Sky Sports and was the second most watched item until at least the year 2000. The Simpsons (Andrew Neil is the person to ask about that seeing as he was one of the people that brought it over here). The 3 items above was one of the many reasons people got Sky. When MTV launched and the Sky movie channels expanded, there was even more reason. Murdoch doesn't like oppressive governments, hence his papers backed Thatcher and Thatcher who didn't trust the BBC was more than happy to allow Murdoch free reign, so, just based on evidence, Murdoch probably had the money for the long haul, so, with or without football (and don't forget, the Premier League wouldn't start for another 3 years) he would plow as much money in to ensure the BBC or ITV didn't get its mits on it. If proof were ever needed, when Sky Digital launched, ITV wouldn't appear on Sky for many years to come due to a spat between them and On Digital. Sorry, I know it is quite lengthy, but this pro-biased piece about Sky, if there was a genuine programe about how it all came to be, it would be quite fascinating to watch.
I was going to comment the same thing. If Sky Television hadn't got the rights to broadcast live Premier League football then they wouldn't have become the huge company they are now.
@@mrkipling2201 And let's not forget getting the rights to ALL the movie studios catalogues following the incompetence that was BSB and the two companies having to merge.
I remember my cousins having it installed from about 1993. We didn't have it in our house, I was never a football man but had become a big boxing fan from about 1990. I used to get them to tape the big fights for me, I was buzzing getting to see the American champs in action, guys like James Toney and Roy Jones Jr.
We moved into our 1st flat in August 1990 just as the Gulf war broke out, we had that 16 channel box fitted, it was amazing when you're used to 4 pishy channels. Staying up late to watch the smart bombs entering chimneys and doorways and blowing buildings up..what a revelation..
Yes i have a friend who got it in March 1989 when the box had 16 channels that you had to press yourself no remote and all channels where free until 1990 when they made people pay for Movie channels
I remember getting Sky back in September 1989, 6 months after the launch. My dad, worked in the factory (Aberdare, in the South Wales Valleys) that was manufacturing the Amstrad receiver boxes. He got one for a discount. None of my friends in School had Sky, and I would cone to school talking about WWF wrestling, Teenage Ninja Hero Turtles and of course, soft core German porn,. Nobody had a clue what I was talking about.
We got sky also way back in 1990 I think, or it might have even been 1989 but I think it was out for a bit longer then a few months when we got it. Also we are from Ireland so pretty much we were the only ones who had it that I knew off. And yeah do you remember the show that used to be on one of the German stations, Tutti fruity 😂 But yeah all the softcore porn was great , especially the 10 mins fres on the adult channel and television x 🤣
@@Klynch111 @Klynch111 Yes! 😂 I do remember Tutti Fruity, loved it! the German quiz show, that the contestants had to strip off. I could not understand a word of what they were saying. But as a school kid, I was not watching it for that.. The 10 free minutes of TV X and the adult channel, flicking between them. Once, I used my dad's credit card, to secure 1 free night of TV X, then had to cancel to prevent them charging for the year. It was all done over the phone in those days, so I had to pretend to be my dad, when I was like 13 or 14. And the charge came up of my dad's credit card statement. I explained to him the truth, he was alright about it, he said "just don't tell mum" only because I caught him watching the Gerrman stuff, a few weeks prior 😂😂😂
Though this was the launch of Sky TV on Astra 1A which was located at 19.2 degrees east in 1989 Sky had actually been broadcasting already for at least a few years(3 to 4 years) from Eutelsat located at 13 degrees east though this satellite required a much bigger satellite dish of at least 1 to 1.5m depending on where you lived and whether the weather was good or poor. I remember back in 1995 having a 80cm dish with 2 lnbs and I was able to get Astra and Eutelsat at the same time though the channels on Eutelsat were a bit pixelated due to my dish not being big enough for the II-F1 satellite though the new at the time Hotbird 1 satellite was no problem for my dish.
True.. we had access to the Sky Channel on Rediffusion cable TV quite a few years before Astra launched. We also had Screensport, MTV and Premiere The Movie Channel
Christ! was it that long ago? I remember dreading it raining and I eventually saw an ad in the magazine for a Juno Gold LNB....it was supposed to e much better in the rain - so I bought one, it was too, but I still dreaded it raining.
@@golgotha3938I must admit that I don't remember, but it doesn't surprise me. Apparently, very few people working at Sky HQ in Isleworth are allowed to speak to her or even approach her. So that's nice, isn't it?
that was BSB who were (at the time) Skys competitor. They used a satellite at 1oWest, whereas Sky used Astra at 19oEast. BSB was a better picture and superior technology, but it lost out. It got to the party late due to infighting, cost overruns and all kinds of the usual corpo BS. Each consortium member had its own agenda and sky just used that to its advantage, it also had mug=ch higher satellite costs (throwing up their own birds), rather than using skys idea of piggybacking .
I remember this so clearly. My Dad started selling sky though his shops and he installed his first system at our house to practice. It remember him eventually selling the Bush system, it was absolute rubbish.The remote was appalling and only worked from a couple of feet away from the box if you were lucky 😂. The story of the war between SKY & BSB is fascinating and how the British government tried to control satellite broadcasting by giving the offical rights to broadcast from satellite in the UK to BSB and how SKY found a loophole around it with the European PAL Astra satellite system.
...and 35 years on, linear television is suddenly out of date. A friend had Sky Channel in the cable days. Couldn't stand their trailers. It was either a bloke with an overdramatic deep voice for drama or a bloke who went over the top with his jokey voice for their 'hilarious' comedies (it could have been Saved by the Bell!).
however the price for such equipment was prohibitively expensive for most people. Some satellites require large (1.2m+) motorised dishes. There was Super Channel on 13deg E, and Discovery Channel on 27.5deg W
This was the launch of the first direct to home satellite system in the UK. BSB wouldn't broadcast for another year and while you could pickup the cable feeds of Sky Channel and Superchannel from the early 80s by using a VERY large (1.2M or larger) motorised dish before this, the cost was around £1000 (circa £4000 today) and the feeds were not meant for home reception so could change at any time.
Sky spent a fortune on the movie rights. They had to, as they wanted to thrash British Satellite Broadcasting which was due to start around the same time as Sky.
Just look at Radio Times from the 80s. For every classic Young Ones or Comic Strip there were a million junk programmes broadcast by the BBC and ITV companies.On the Sunday evening this was broadcast BBC1 was showing Songs of Prase, BBC2 "The Money Programme" (exactly what the BBC should be doing but not riviting family viewing) and ITV something like "Bullsye". I think most people would have chosen Dolly Parton and Family Ties on Sky.
@munehaus I agree that Sunday nights were crap aside from the half-hour comedy slot reserved for Spitting Image or Hale & Pace at 10 pm on ITV. My point was, when it came to comedy, drama & current affairs, both ITV & the BBC (back then) were still very good at delivering such output. By comparison, comedy & drama on Sky was largely bought in from America while current affairs programming was very tabloid in nature
@@stevenoneill7166 Oh I agree, especially beck then when Sky had a very small number of viewers and much smaller budget than it did a decade or two later. But the point was it's output was not that different from the average output of the other channels, even if it didn't have the really good stuff. That was all that was needed to win over Songs of Praise etc.
never had sky, and i doubt i ever will, in the age of streaming it's become more and more irrelevant, and if there's something on a service i want to see that i don't subscribe to, i can easily get it through a torrent, it's how i watched The Last of Us the morning after it's American broadcast but before the UK one
The beginning of the end of Football in the UK… yes you there put better films on than ITV but ITV football was free… you also pay to watch adverts on sky 😂 🤷♂️ ….
And im sure although she is still queen bee at sky she was never head hunted for a top job at the BBC or ITV and that must have pi55ed her off to this day
They trippled the number of channels available to the public that day and broke the government monopoly on TV broadcasting. Nothing else in history has done more to give the UK TV choice.
