Sky Tv Uk Buy
Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of Sky Group and from 2018 onwards, part of Comcast. It is the UK's largest pay-TV broadcaster with 12.7 million customers as of the end of 2019[2] for its digital satellite TV platform. Sky's flagship products are Sky Q and the internet-based Sky Glass, and its flagship channels are Sky Showcase, Sky Sports and Sky Atlantic.
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Formed as British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) in November 1990 through the merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting,[3] it grew into a major media company by the end of the decade, notably owning all the television broadcasting rights for the Premier League and almost all the domestic rights of Hollywood films.[4] Following BSkyB's acquisition of Sky Italia and a majority interest in Sky Deutschland in 2014, its holding company British Sky Broadcasting Group plc changed its name to Sky plc (now Sky Group Limited).[5] The UK subsidiary's name was changed from British Sky Broadcasting Limited to Sky UK Limited, and continuing to trade as "Sky".
Sky UK Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast-owned Sky Group, with its current company directors (including that of Sky Ireland) being Executive Vice-President Stephen van Rooyen and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) Lyssa McGowen.[6] Its corporate headquarters are at the Sky Studios in Isleworth.[7]
In the autumn of 1991, talks were held for the broadcast rights for Premier League for five years, from the 1992 season.[8] ITV were the current rights holders and fought hard to retain the new rights. ITV had increased its offer from 18m to 34m per year to keep control of the rights.[9] BSkyB joined forces with the BBC[10] to make a counter bid. The BBC was given the highlights of most of the matches, while BSkyB paying 304m for the Premier League rights, would give them a monopoly of all live matches, up to 60 per year from the 1992 season.[11] Murdoch described sport as a "battering ram" for pay television, providing a strong customer base.[12] A few weeks after the deal, ITV went to the High Court to get an injunction as it believed their bid details had been leaked before the decision was taken. ITV also asked the Office of Fair Trading to investigate since it believed Rupert Murdoch's media empire via its newspapers had influenced the deal.[13] A few days later neither action took effect, ITV believed BSkyB was telephoned and informed of its 262m bid, and Premier League advised BSkyB to increase its counter bid.[14]
In September 1993, BSkyB launched Sky Multichannels which was the present digital platform's analogue predecessor. Sky Multichannels was a subscription package that gave access not only to Sky's channels but also to those of third-party broadcasters.
The service started on 1 September 1993. It was based on an idea by then CEO Sam Chisholm and chairman Rupert Murdoch of converting the company's business strategy to an entirely fee-based concept. The new package included four channels formerly available free-to-air, broadcasting on Astra's satellites, as well as introducing new channels.[18] The service continued until the closure of BSkyB's analogue service on 27 September 2001,[19] due to the expansion of the Sky Digital platform after its launch three years before. Some of the channels did broadcast either in the clear or soft encrypted (whereby a Videocrypt decoder was required to decode, without a subscription card) before their addition to the Sky Multichannels package.[20][21] Within two months of the launch, BSkyB gained 400,000 new subscribers, with the majority taking at least one premium channel as well,[22] which helped BSkyB reach 3.5 million households by mid-1994. Michael Grade criticised the operations in front of the Select Committee on National Heritage, mainly for the lack of original programming on many of the new channels.[23]
BSkyB's digital service was officially launched on 1 October 1998 under the name Sky Digital, although small-scale tests were carried out before then. At this time the use of the Sky Digital brand made an important distinction between the new service and Sky's analogue services. Key selling points were the improvement in picture and sound quality, increased number of channels and an interactive service branded Open...., later called Sky Active. BSkyB competed with the ONdigital (later ITV Digital) terrestrial offering and cable services. Within 30 days, over 100,000 digiboxes had been sold, which helped bolster BSkyB's decision to give away free digiboxes and mini dishes from May 1999.
In addition to most channels from the Sky Multichannels package, many of which broadcast additional hours on Sky Digital, Sky Digital launched several new channels that were exclusive to the digital offer.
The switchover from analogue to digital proceeded relatively quickly. In 1998, there were 6 million 'multichannel' TV homes in the UK (i.e. homes that watch television other than the traditional analogue terrestrial), and over half of these homes watched television using BSkyB's analogue service. BSkyB's digital service surpassed the analogue service in terms of subscribers in late 1999.[24]
By June 2000 the service had 3.6 million subscribers, which gave BSkyB 8.988 million subscribers across all platforms. This substantial growth reflected BSkyB's 34% share of viewers in multi-channel homes (up from 13.4% in 1999).[25]
In November 2005, in partnership with Vodafone, Sky Mobile TV was launched which was the UK's first commercially available mobile TV service. Vodafone live! customers with 3G enabled handsets would receive the service.[27]
Sky's direct-to-home satellite service became available in 10 million homes in 2010, Europe's first pay-TV platform to achieve that milestone. Confirming it had reached its target, the broadcaster said its reach into 36% of households in the UK represented an audience of more than 25m people. The target was first announced in August 2004, and since then an additional 2.4m customers had subscribed to Sky's direct-to-home service. Media commentators had debated whether the figure could be reached as the growth in subscriber numbers elsewhere in Europe flattened.[28]
In December, the UK's parliament heard a claim that a subscription to Sky was 'often damaging' to welfare recipients, along with alcohol, tobacco and gambling. Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke was proposing the payments of benefits and tax credits on a "Welfare Cash Card", in the style of the American Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, that could be used to buy only "essentials".[29]
Comcast, the largest cable TV provider in the United States, outbid 21st Century Fox, on 22 September 2018 in an auction for control of Sky UK. On 4 October 2018, Fox sold their stake to Comcast, giving the latter a 76.8% controlling stake.[32] On 12 October 2018, Comcast announced it will compulsorily acquire the rest of Sky after its bid gained acceptance from 95.3% of the broadcaster's shareholders with the company being delisted by early 2019.[33] Sky was delisted on 7 November 2018 after Comcast acquired all remaining shares.[34]
On 17 September 2020, Sky Arts became the first premium Sky channel to become available on the free to air terrestrial Freeview service, joining Sky News and a couple of channels which trace their linage back to Flextech (Pick and Challenge).[35][36]
On 28 July 2021, Sky announced that its flagship channel Sky One would shut down on 1 September, to be replaced by two channels; Sky Showcase, showing a mixture of content from other Sky Channels, and Sky Max, showing Sky's original programming and entertainment previously shown on Sky One.[37]
On 7 October 2021, Sky announced a new all-in-one TV set called Sky Glass.[38] It is designed to support streaming of Sky TV and streaming service shows over WiFi, eliminating the need for a satellite dish or box. It launched on 18 October 2021, with three sizes available: 43-inch, 55-inch and 65-inch.[39]
Sky initially faced competition from the ONdigital digital terrestrial television service (later renamed ITV Digital). ITV Digital failed for numerous reasons, including, but not limited to numerous administrative and technical failures, nervous investors after a large downturn in the advertising market and the dot com crash, and Sky's aggressive marketing and domination of premium sporting rights.
While Sky had been excluded from being a part of the ONdigital consortium, thereby making them a competitor by default, Sky was able to join ITV Digital's free-to-air replacement, Freeview, in which it holds an equal stake with the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Arqiva. Prior to October 2005, three Sky channels were available on this platform: Sky News, Sky Three, and Sky Sports News. Initially, Sky provided Sky Travel to the service. However, this was replaced by Sky Three on 31 October 2005, which was itself later re-branded as 'Pick TV' in 2011.
On 8 February 2007, Sky announced its intention to replace its three free-to-air digital terrestrial channels with four subscription channels. It was proposed that these channels would offer a range of content from the Sky portfolio including sports (including English Premier League Football), films, entertainment and news.[41] The announcement came a day after Setanta Sports confirmed that it would launch in March as a subscription service on the digital terrestrial platform, and on the same day that NTL's services re-branded as Virgin Media. However, industry sources believe Sky will be forced to shelve plans to withdraw its channels from Freeview and replace them with subscription channels, due to possible lost advertising revenue.[42]
Sky initially faced increased competition from telecommunications providers to deliver pay television services over existing telephone lines using ADSL. Such providers are able to offer "triple-play" or "quad-play" packages combining landline telephone, broadband Internet, mobile telephone and pay television services. 041b061a72