Sky Sports

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Sky Sports
Image:Sky Sports Logo Colour.gif
Launched:25 March 1990
Audience Share (June 2005 [1]):3.8% (all Sky Sports channels combined)
Owned By:British Sky Broadcasting Group
Web Address:skysports.com
Availability
Terrestrial Analogue:not available
Terrestrial Digital:Sky Sports News only, Channel 43
Satellite:Sky Digital Channels 401, 402, 403, 404, 408
Cable:NTL Channel 40, 41, 42, 812, 950.

NTL Ireland Channel 402-405 and 408. Telewest Channel 511 - 515. Chorus Communications Channel 60-62.

Sky Sports is a group of 5 channels - Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2, Sky Sports 3, Sky Sports Xtra, and Sky Sports News - operated by British Sky Broadcasting, mainly for their Sky Digital platform. The first channel, Sky Sports (now Sky Sports 1) was launched in 1990, as The Sports Channel, renamed Sky Sports after Sky Television's merger with British Satellite Broadcasting. Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, and Xtra are available as an additional subscription package on top of normal Sky Digital, and some to all channels are available as options on nearly every cable system in the UK and Ireland. Unlike the other channels, Sky Sports News is usually provided as part of the basic package. They are mainly known for the extremely extensive football coverage.

Contents

Overview

Sky Sports originally began broadcasting - as The Sports Channel - in March 1990, as part of the British Satellite Broadcasting service on cable, becoming available on the Marcopolo satellite the following month. Sky Television did not originally launch with a sports channel of their own - though sports programmes were occasionally broadcast on Sky Channel - but instead chose to invest in Eurosport instead, which was marketed as one of Sky's four channels upon its launch on 5 February, 1989. On 2 November 1990 British Satellite Broadcasting and Sky Television announced that they would be merging. At first the Sports Channel gained a "British Sky Broadcasting" suffix on its logo, however from 6 April 1991 - when the channel launched on the SES Astra platform - it was rebranded and renamed Sky Sports. Sky and Eurosport discontinued their partnership upon the launch of Sky Sports.

It was sold as one of them major draws of the Sky system, and in September 1992 moved to Videocrypt encryption to fund its programming acquisition. Notably, it was the first channel to go encrypted on the Sky package, which by 1994 was entirely encrypted.

The channel initially aired sports such as rugby and golf in 1990, before aquiring rights to German and Italian league football in 1990. However, it wasn't until the formation of the F.A. Premier League for the 1992/1993 football season, believed to have been assisted by the promise of higher TV payments, that Sky Sports became well known. By bidding £305m, BSkyB beat the BBC and ITV to acquire the live and exclusive FA Premier League football broadcasting rights for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland for a five-year period. In doing so, they had taken live top-flight English league football from terrestrial and free-to-air television. During the 1990s, Sky Sports expanded to three channels, imaginatively named Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2 and Sky Sports 3.

Ever since Sky acquired live rights to Premier League Football, their programming has been sponsored by Ford. Their four flagship shows are Ford Monday Night Football, Ford Super Sunday, Soccer Saturday and Football Special, most of which have remained relatively unchanged in format or presenters since their foundations in the early 1990s.

In 1994, the channel launched Soccer AM, a slapstick morning chat show, talking mostly about football events around the world, along with many gags in the world of soccer and the media. This show has proved highly succesful, and is still aired today. The current presenters are Tim Lovejoy and Helen Chamberlain. It became a media phenomenon for a short period of time in the early 2000s when they lead a campaign to save a man from his non-football tolerating wife. The Save Chip! campaign was mentioned on non-Sky news channels, and even made its way into the title sequences of a number of football simulation computer games.

Sky Sports 3 launched in the peak of the 1996-97 Football Season, and it reqiured many top sporting legends and heroes to launch the channel. Sky Sports also reqiured the rights of Scottish Football, and the Coca-Cola Cup, now known as the Carling Cup (League Cup).

Sky Sports Xtra was launched in March 1999 and was available exclusively on Sky Digital. Its broadcasts include repeats from the other Sky Sports channels, along with live programming such as Spanish football and UEFA Champions League football. By late 2003, it had been launched on NTL and Telewest.

Shortly after the launch of Sky Sports Xtra, on 22 August 1999, Sky utilised a feature of then- new Sky Digital system to allow an interactive football match to be shown. Viewers could watch the Arsenal vs Manchester United match either normally, or through Sky Digitals OpenTV implementation, which let them chose specific viewing angles, different commentary, and similar features. This concept proved popular and soon Sky used the interactive service, Sky Sports Active, for many sports other than football.

In 2000, Sky launched Sky Sports News (briefly for a period, renamed skysports.com TV) , a 24-hour rolling sports news channel, which mainly focuses on football. It is available without a subscription to the Sky Sports package, and is also on Freeview.

In June 2001, Sky Sports and other channels such as Cartoon Network and Sky News ceased broadcasting on analogue satellite TV, to be available only on the digital platform. Sky Sports 2 continued the service for a couple of days and moved to Sky Sports 1's transponder. The channels still remained and informed viewers that if they wanted to continue viewing Sky Sports, they should subscribe to Sky Digital or another digital platform.

During this period, a cross-branding deal ensured that a quiz version of Championship Manager was produced with the Sky Sports name on it.

Image:ChampionsLeagueInter.jpg

On 24 September 2002, BSkyB and ITV jointly won the UK rights to broadcast live matches from the UEFA Champions League. In doing so, they beat the BBC and Channel 4, and ensured that Champions League match could be viewed live in the United Kingdom. Under the three-year deal ITV had first choice of the two live matches on Tuesday evenings, leaving Sky Sports the remainder. On Wednesdays Sky Sports can broadcast all games exclusively live. This means they can show up to 14 live UEFA Champions League matches per week. Sky immediately incorporated interactivity to their UEFA Champions League coverage and called it 'Champions League Interactive'. This involved up to eight different games being available on eight different screens, although not all are available full-screen or with high quality (or any) commentary.

Sky Sports also signed a new contract with the Football League to air matches until 2007, worth around £250m. This was in the aftermath of ITV Digital's collapse

In July 2004, Sky bought the horse racing channel, Attheraces from Channel 4. Attheraces was insolvent, and despite being promoted as part of the Sky Sports line up, has failed to turn a profit, or even overtake Racing UK as the most-watched horse racing channel.

As of 2005, Sky have signed an exclusive deal to broadcast live English cricket matches. As with most of their previous exclusive deals, this has caused some controversy as the matches would no longer be available on terrestrial TV.

Sky Sports have also snapped up the rights for the A1 Grand Prix, a new exclusive two-year deal with the NFL and a deal with Jamie Redknapp as regular studio guest for Sky's range of live football, in the coming months.

Sky Sports Programming

Sky own exclusive UK and Ireland, or UK-only exclusivity rights to a number of sports, most notably the ones listed below. They also transmit a large range of other sports.

Sky Sports Presenters & Pundits

Football/Soccer

Boxing

Sky Sports News Presenters

Cricket

External Links:

Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Sky_Sports.html"


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