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British Sky Broadcasting
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British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB Sky Television and BSB) is a company that operates Sky Digital, a subscription television service in the UK and Ireland. It produces TV content, and owns several TV channels. It is the UK's largest pay TV provider. More than a third of the equity is owned by News Corporation, an American company chaired by Rupert Murdoch; News Corporation's precise shareholding fluctuates due to share options and buy backs and was 39% at February 2007.
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British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB Sky Television and BSB) is a company that operates Sky Digital, a subscription television service in the UK and Ireland. It produces TV content, and owns several TV channels. It is the UK's largest pay TV provider. More than a third of the equity is owned by News Corporation, an American company chaired by Rupert Murdoch; News Corporation's precise shareholding fluctuates due to share options and buy backs and was 39% at February 2007. As of 30 September 2008 it had 9,067,000 direct to home customers in the UK and Ireland. As of February 2007, it also had 3,294,000 indirect customers through the cable operator Virgin Media in the UK, and a further 604,000 indirect cable customers on UPC Ireland in Ireland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
History
The Astra satellite network began with the launch of Astra 1A in 1989. With the launch of more Astra satellites from 1991 onward BSkyB was able to begin expanding its services (the Astra satellites were all orbitally co-located at 19.2° east so that they could be received using the same dish).
Sky does not own any of the satellites it has used since withdrawing service from the Marcopolo craft; the Astra satellites are owned and operated by SES Astra (and Eurobird 1 by Eutelsat). Sky has shared its orbital position with other pay-TV systems in the past.
Sky has also worked together with Tata Group bringing Tata Sky in India and substituary states.
Origins
Early years
By 1990 both Rupert Murdoch's Sky Television and the BSB alliance were beginning to struggle with the burden of massive losses which led to a 50:50 financial merger in November 1990.
The new company was called British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) but marketed as Sky, Marco Polo House was sold, BSB's channels were largely scrapped in favour of Sky's and the Marcopolo satellites were run down and eventually sold in favour of the Astra system (Marcopolo I in December 1993 to NSAB of Sweden and Marcopolo II in July 1992 to Telenor of Norway. Both companies had already one HS376 in orbit at the time). The merger may have saved Sky financially; Sky had very few major advertisers to begin with. Acquiring BSB's healthier advertising contracts and equipment apparently solved the company's problems.
Move to Digital
The launch of the Astra 2A satellite at a new orbital position, 28.2° east, in 1997 (followed by more Astra satellites as well as Eutelsat's Eurobird 1 at 28.5°E), enabled the company to launch a new all-digital service, Sky Digital, with the potential to carry hundreds of television and radio channels.
Timeline
- 1989 5 February Sky television launches DTH UK service via Astra satellite
- 1990 Sky subscribers reach 1 million
- 1990 November British Sky Broadcasting formed by merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB). Murdoch the majority shareholder through News International, BSB partners' Pearson, Reed, Chargeurs and Granada shareholdings were held through BSB Holdings Limited (BSBH)
- 1991 Of BSB's five channels; Now news programmes merged with Sky News and Sky Arts created to use Now programming, Galaxy merged with Sky One, The Sports Channel is rebranded to Sky Sports soon after the merger, The Movie Channel is retained, The Power Station is retained, but withdrawn later. Sky One, Sky News and Sky Movies maintained but Eurosport is withdrawn. Eurosport later went free-to-air across Europe on ASTRA after adding more adverts.
- 1992 July BSkyB sells the former BSB Marcopolo II satellite to Telenor
- 1992 BSkyB signs exclusive live television rights deal with the FA Premier League
- 1992 31 December BSkyB ceases transmissions to Marcopolo I satellite
- 1993 1 September "Sky Multichannel" packages launched
- 1993 December BSkyB sells the former BSB Marcopolo I satellite to NSAB
- 1994 17% of BSkyB is floated on the London and New York stock exchanges
- 1994 Five more channels launch, including Sky Sports 2
- 1995 Six more channels launched including History Channel and Disney Channel
- 1995 BSkyB enter the FTSE 100 Index
- 1996 BSkyB signs an extension of its Premier League rights for £670 million
- 1998 30 August First of a new generation of Astra satellites launched, paving way for digital satellite television. Sky Digital launches on 1 October
- 1999 Vivendi SA becomes sole shareholder of BSBH, which held 11.8% of BSkyB at the time. It also acquired the shareholding of Pathι through merger, bringing its total shareholding to 22% (as of 2001). BSkyB Chairman Jιrτme Seydoux forced to resign due to sale of Pathι's interest; Murdoch takes Chairmanship to prevent Vivendi acquiring it (as it would be entitled to)
- 2001 BSkyB signs 5 millionth subscriber. Analogue service discontinued
- 2001 Sky+ introduced: A set top box/digital video recorder hybrid
- 2001 December Vivendi Universal sells part of its shareholding comprising 8% of the company, followed by the remaining 14% in May 2002
- 2002 BSkyB takes an equal share of Freeview, in partnership with the BBC and Crown Castle (now part of National Grid)
- 2003 James Murdoch elected as CEO, replacing Tony Ball
- 2003 Sky subscribers reach 7.5 million
- 2003 Sky acquires the television series 24 from Fox which was previously shown on the BBC
- 2005 BSkyB purchase network provider Easynet for £211m ($373.1m).
- 2005 Sky launches Sky by Broadband, a service available to existing movie and sports service subscribers that allows them to download movies and sports clips direct to their home computer. The service is made available free of charge
- 2006 Sky HD launches on 22 May, with a line-up of 10 high definition channels
- 2006 Sky acquires Mykindaplace.com to expand its internet presence
- 2006 Sky acquires Aura Sports Ltd to expand its internet media sales presence
- 2006 Sky achieves CarbonNeutral status
- 2006 Sky launches and allows pre-registering of its new broadband service
- 2006 Sky is listed as one of the applicants for the licence to manage Ireland's digital terrestrial television network
- 2006 Sky acquires Season 3 and 4 of Lost in a multi-million pound deal with Buena Vista International Television (previous series were shown on Channel 4)
- 2006 Sky acquires 17.9% stake in ITV, Britain's largest free-to-air commercial broadcaster.
- 2006 Sky rebrands VoD services, such as Sky By Broadband, as Sky Anytime, adding US imports to on-demand content.
- 2007 Sky announces plans to launch pay channels on the digital terrestrial platform.
- 2007 Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Alistair Darling asks media regulator Ofcom to investigate Sky's purchase of a stake in ITV plc.
- 2007 Sky's increased price demands causes Virgin Media to not renew the contract to provide Sky basic channels (effective from 1 March 2007) after negotiations falls through.
- 2007 BSkyB acquire electronics manufacturer Amstrad for a reported £125 million.
- 2007 29 October Sky Broadband reach 1 million customer mark.
- 2007 29 October BSkyB offer to give up part of their ITV voting rights after a ruling from the Competition Commission.
- 2008 10 November BSkyB announces that they will offer online TV. Satellite TV channels to be broadcast over the internet. No satellite receiver needed.
- 2009 17 February BSkyB announces that they will be replacing over 90,000 Sky+HD boxes due to a technical fault. Boxes will be replaced for free and customers will receive three months of HD services, free of charge.
Corporate information
Management
Rupert Murdoch's News International (a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation) currently has a 38% stake in the company. News Corp also fully owns Sky Italia, about 78% of New Zealand's SKY Network Television Limited and Sky FBiH of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The first CEO of BSkyB was Sam Chisholm, who was CEO of Sky TV before the merger. Chisholm served in this position until 1997. He was followed by Mark Booth who was credited with leading the company through the introduction of Sky Digital. Tony Ball was appointed in 1999 and completed the company's analogue to digital conversion. He is also credited with returning the company to profit and bringing subscriber numbers to new heights. In 2003 Ball announced his resignation and James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch was announced as his successor. This appointment caused allegations of nepotism from shareholders.
On 7 December 2007 it was announced that Rupert Murdoch would be stepping down as BSkyB's Non-Executive Chairman and would be replaced by his Son, James. It was also announced that James would be stepping down as CEO of BSkyB and will be replaced by Jeremy Darroch
Organisation
Direct subsidiaries
- British Sky Broadcasting Ltd.
Operating company for the Sky pay-television service. - Sky Television Ltd.
The original Sky Television plc, now a holding company - Sports Internet Group Ltd.
Sports content and online betting services. - British Interactive Broadcasting Holdings Ltd.
Interactive television services, formerly an alliance of BSkyB, BT Group, HSBC and Matsushita. - Easynet Ltd.
Network infrastructure for Sky Broadband, Easynet connect, UK Online, and third party corporate customers. - Mykindaplace.com.
Being both an agency and a media owner, run many successful sites. - Aura Sports Ltd
Media Sales Agency, sells advertising on the majority of premiership football club websites, as well as other major sports. - Aura Play Ltd
Another Media Sales Agency, sells advertising across a number of websites in the music and entertainment sector.
Joint ventures
Others
Other subsidiaries include Sky In-Home Service Ltd which installs Sky equipment, and the Luxembourg based British Sky Broadcasting SA which is the company which leases transponders on Astra satellites.
Financial Performance
| Year ended | Turnover (£m) | Profit/(loss)
before tax (£m) | Net profit/
(loss)(£m) |
|---|
| 30 June 2008 | 4,952 | 60 | (127) | | 30 June 2007 | 4,551 | 815 | 499 | | 30 June 2006 | 4,148 | 798 | 551 | | 30 June 2005 | 4,048 | 631 | 425 | | 30 June 2004 | 3,656 | 480 | 322 | | 30 June 2003 | 3,186 | 128 | 190 | | 30 June 2002 | 2,776 | (1,276) | (1,383) | | 30 June 2001 | 2,306 | (515) | (539) | | 30 June 2000 | 1,847 | (263) | (272) | | 30 June 1999 | 1,545 | (389) | (285) | | 30 June 1998 | 1,434 | 271 | 249 | | 30 June 1997 | 1,270 | 314 | 288 | | 30 June 1996 | 1,008 | 257 | - | | 30 June 1995 | 778 | 155 | - | | 30 June 1994 | 550 | 93 | - | | 30 June 1993 | 380 | (76) | - | | 30 June 1992 | 233 | (188) | - | | 30 June 1991 | 93 | (759) | - |
Locations
The main headquarters are in Osterley, London. Sky originated material is uplinked to the satellite from BSB's original earth station at Chilworth, outside Southampton (and from the BT owned Madley Communications Centre and London Teleport earthstations).
The largest concentration of Sky staff in the UK is in Scotland; the main areas being in Livingston and Dunfermline. There is also Uddingston. These house Sky's contact centres as well as the IT departments, Finance departments and Field Operations. Other contact centres are located in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Glasgow.
Competition
The Ofcom Consumer Panel complained that the BSkyB plan to operate pay TV services on Freeview was "generating serious consumer detriment" and the National Consumer Council call the BSkyB plan "bad news for consumers," combined with representations from BT, Setanta, Top Up TV, and Virgin Media has caused Ofcom to launch an investigation into the "features of the [UK pay TV] market, including control over content, ownership of distribution platforms, retail subscriber bases and vertical integration."
Virgin Media - Main Competition
At present the other major pay-TV operator in the United Kingdom is the service provider Virgin Media (Rebranded in 2007 from NTL:Telewest). Virgin Media's cable network was also formed by numerous mergers and acquisitions over the last decade, with different cable companies having used different types of network and technology in their areas. This has made it difficult for the company to roll out new services across the UK quickly.
Virgin Media includes the Virgin Media Television production company which owns several channels, including a 50% stake in the UKTV network.
Like Sky, Virgin Media offers high-definition television (HDTV) services. However, the number of channels available is limited by BSkyB's refusal to allow the HDTV channels it owns to be broadcast by other companies. This situation is somewhat addressed, however, by the fact that Virgin can provide HDTV content using its Video on demand services and the fact that the V+ HDTV-supplying box can upscale all of its received transmissions to near-HDTV quality.
On 1 March 2007, BSkyB removed its basic Sky channels from the Virgin Media service after requesting Virgin pay the company £35,000,000, for the rights to show the channels, in what has been seen as an effort to move existing Virgin media customers to Sky. Virgin have refused outright to pay the sum, and, in a press release on Virgin Media's website, have said they will continue to "stand-up for the consumer" against, what has been seen, by all non-Murdoch owned British press, as "playground bully tactics". Recent print advertising for Sky however claims that Virgin media 'doubted the value' of the channels concerned, and implies the decision to drop the channels was that of Virgin Media. On 6 March 2007 Sky launched a radio advert urging Virgin customers to migrate to Sky to access their "favourite shows".
On 28 February 2007 BSkyB stopped providing its basic channels to Virgin Media customers due to a dispute over fees. The availability (at an extra charge) of Sky's premium sport and movie services was not effected by the dispute. This impasse continued for twenty-one months, with both companies initiating High Court proceedings. On 4 November, 2008 it was announced that an agreement had been struck for Sky's Basic channels including Sky1, Sky2, Sky3, Sky News, Sky Sports News, Sky Arts 1, Sky Arts 2, Sky Real Lives and Sky Real Lives 2 to return to Virgin Media from 13 November, 2008 until 12 June, 2011. In exchange will be provided continued carriage of Virgin Media Television's channels Living, Living2, Bravo, Bravo +1, Trouble, Challenge and Virgin1 for the same period.
The agreements include fixed annual carriage fees of £30m for the channels with both channel suppliers able to secure additional capped payments if their channels meet certain performance-related targets. As part of the agreements, both Sky and Virgin Media have agreed to terminate all High Court proceedings against each other relating to the carriage of their respective basic channels.
Television over ADSL services
Sky is facing increased competition from telecommunications providers delivering pay television services over existing telephone lines using ADSL. Such providers are potentially able to offer "triple-play" or "quad-play" packages combining land-line telephone, broadband Internet, mobile telephone and pay television services.
In the final quarter of 2006, BT, the UK's biggest Telephone company, launched BT Vision. The BT Vision set-top box, provides true Video on Demand (VoD) over BT's telephone lines using ADSL. The set-top-box complements the VoD component by providing access to the Freeview digital terrestrial television service. Tiscali TV also offers an IPTV service with many channels, including Sky's channels, delivered to a set top box over ADSL.
To compete with these providers, in October 2005, BSkyB bought the broadband Internet Service Provider Easynet for £211 million. This acquisition has allowed BSkyB to start offering its "Sky Anytime on PC" service as well as a "triple play" package combining satellite television, land-line telephone and Broadband service. Sky also offers some streaming live TV channels to a computer using Microsoft's Silverlight.
Digital Terrestrial Television
BSkyB 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 down-turn in the advertising market and the dot com crash, and BSkyB's aggressive marketing and domination of premium sporting rights.
Sky was more receptive to ITV Digital's free-to-air replacement, Freeview, in which it holds an equal stake with the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and National Grid Wireless. At the time of writing, three BSkyB channels are available on this platform: Sky News, Sky Three, and Sky Sports News. Initially BSkyB provided Sky Travel to the service. However, this was replaced by Sky Three on 31 October 2005, allowing BSkyB to air its exclusive licensed content with delays of between 12-18 months from their original air dates on Sky One.
Terrestrial television companies currently have limited bandwidth. This means that, at present, there is little or no option to offer HD services, until after the final analogue television services are switched off in 2012 freeing up substantial bandwidth.
In a response to the push towards Free to Air services such as Freesat and Freeview, BSkyB has marketed its own free to view offering (Freesat from Sky).
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 sport (including English Premiership Football), movies, entertainment and news. 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 rebranded 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.
Stake in ITV plc
ITV plc has been the subject of a flurry of rumoured take-over and merger bids since it was formed. For example, on 2006-11-09, NTL announced that it had approached ITV plc about a proposed merger . The merger was effectively blocked by BSkyB on 2006-11-17 when it controversially bought a 17.9% stake in ITV plc for £940 million , a move that attracted anger from NTL shareholder Richard Branson and an investigation from media and telecoms regulator Ofcom. On 2006-12-06, NTL announced that it had complained to the Office of Fair Trading about BSkyB's move. NTL stated that it had withdrawn its attempt to buy ITV plc, citing that it did not believe that there was any possibility to make a deal on favourable terms. At the same time as the NTL bid, RTL, the owner of Five, was also rumoured to be preparing a bid for ITV plc, with the possibility of a stock-swap with BSkyB. The plan would see RTL acquiring BSkyB's stake in ITV plc (with the aim of further acquisitions of shares in the future) in exchange for BSkyB taking full control of Five. However, no move from RTL has yet materialised so far.
Future
The Economist has suggested that News Corporation would eventually like to merge BSkyB with its US satellite operation, DirecTV and possibly its STAR TV and the Malaysia-based Astro network to form a global satellite TV company. However, News Corporation has now sold its stake in DirecTV; in return for the sale Murdoch got John Malone's stake in News Corp. Sky is also rumoured to be interested in adding NFL Sunday Ticket (currently available on DirecTV in the US).
EPG
Sky has developed a new version of its Sky Guide electronic programme guide (EPG) service, which includes new genres, easier access to channels, and a complete renumbering system. It also includes new hotkeys to get into new menus quicker. This is the biggest change to the Sky EPG since its launch in 1998.
On Demand services
Sky Anytime is the current brand for Sky's on-demand services currently available on TV (Sky+ and Sky HD), and 3G mobile phones.
Sky Anytime on PC has been rebranded to Sky Player
High Definition TV (HDTV)
BSkyB launched its HDTV service, Sky HD, on 22 May 2006. Leading up to the launch, Sky claimed that 40,000 people had signed up to the HD service. However, in the week before the launch rumours started to surface that Sky was having supply problems of its Set Top Box (STB) from manufacturer Thomson. Starting on Thursday 18 May, and then all through the weekend before launch, people were reporting that Sky had either cancelled or rescheduled its installations. Finally, the BBC reported that 17,000 customers had been let down for the launch due to failed deliveries. Some customers reported installations were only cancelled on the day of the launch. The episode was widely seen as being very embarrassing for Sky, who until that point had been extremely conservative in new service launch schedules. The supply problems were resolved shortly after launch.
According to figures published by Sky, there were 591,000 subscribers to the Sky HD service by 30 September 2008.
Sky Picnic
Sky Picnic is a proposed pay TV service to launch on the digital terrestrial television platform in the United Kingdom from British Sky Broadcasting. The launch of the service is currently being held back due to a consultation process from the UK media regulator, Ofcom, announced on 4 October 2007.
Sky has submitted plans to Ofcom to put three free-to-air channels currently available on digital terrestrial television behind a pay-wall and market the new channels under the brand Picnic will offer subscribers premium Sky content, including Sky Sports 1, Sky Movies Screen 1 and Sky1. Disney Channel is the first third-party broadcaster to join Picnic, second is Discovery Channel.
The service will initially comprise three MPEG-2 video streams but will switch to MPEG-4 and offer a fourth stream carrying Sky News 24/7 if Ofcom approves use of the more bandwidth-efficient compression format. It currently offers Sky News, Sky3 and Sky Sports News on Freeview. Sky intends to launch a three-channel package using existing MPEG-2 technology, and wants to be able to bundle broadband and telephony products into the package. The first channel on the Picnic service would be a simulcast of Sky Sports 1. The second would show Disney Channel during the day and Sky Movies SD1 in the evening, and the third would offer Discovery Channel during the day and a simulcast of Sky1 in the evening.
In September 2008, Sky announced that it was suspending the development of Picnic after failing to receive the support of Ofcom, casting doubt on the future of the project. A spokesperson for BSkyB commented: "We want to invest in Picnic because it will be good for consumers and a good opportunity for Sky but the blunt truth is that Ofcom has spent 18 months looking at our proposals and there is no end in sight."
Football rights
BSkyB's purchase of broadcast rights for major sporting events, most importantly Premiership football, has been the bedrock of its success. The company paid over £300 million for the Premier League rights, beating the BBC and ITV, and has had a monopoly of live matches since the inception of the Premier League in 1992. Murdoch has described sport as a "battering ram" for pay-television, providing a strong customer base.
However, following a lengthy legal battle with the European Commission, which deemed the exclusivity of the rights to be against the interests of competition and the consumer, BSkyB's monopoly will come to an end from the 200708 season. In May 2006 the Irish broadcaster Setanta Sports was awarded two of the six Premiership packages that the English FA offered to broadcasters. Sky picked up the remaining four for £1.3 billion.
BT offer a pay per view service of selected Premier League matches through their BT Vision service, and Virgin Media offer free highlights on the Virgin Media website.
In September 2008, BT announced that it is thinking of biding for live Premier League matches when the biding starts in January 2009.
Set Top Boxes and conditional access
Sky utilizes the VideoGuard pay-TV scrambling system owned by NDS, a News Corporation subsidiary. There are tight controls over use of VideoGuard decoders; they are not available as stand-alone DVB CAMs (Conditional Access Modules). BSkyB has design authority over all digital satellite receivers capable of receiving their service. The receivers, though designed and built by different manufacturers, must conform to the same user interface look-and-feel as all the others. This extends to the Personal video recorder (PVR) offering (branded Sky+). Although the manufacturers have to follow BSkyB's design criteria, many people think that giving the broadcaster such total control over the viewing experience (and viewing prices) may keep other PVR features from appearing on BSkyB's receivers due to the monopoly position over the decoding CAMs. BSkyB initially charged additional subscription fees for using a Sky+ PVR with their service; however, from early 2004, this additional £10 per month charge was waived for subscribers whose package includes two or more premium channels or Sky HD boxes to encourage existing owners to upgrade. As from 1 July 2007, customers that do have Sky+ and pay £10 (as they don't subscribe to 2 or more premium channels) will get Sky+ free of charge. The few customers that don't subscribe to Sky's channels and have Sky+ still pay the £10 per month. In September 2007, Sky launched a new TV advertising campaign targeting Sky+ at women. As of 31 March 2008 sky have 3,393,000 sky+ users.
Television channels operated by BSkyB
- At The Races
- Sky Active
- Sky Arts 1
- Sky Arts 2
- Sky Arts HD
- Sky Box Office (pay-per-view) - 50 screens
- Sky Box Office Events (pay-per-view)
- Sky Box Office Previews
- Sky Box Office HD 1 & 2
- Sky Movies Premiere, Premiere+1, Comedy, Classics, Family, Modern Greats, Indie, Sci-Fi & Horror, Action & Thriller, Screen 1, Screen 2 and Drama.
- Sky Movies HD Premiere, Comedy, Action & Thriller, Family, Drama, Sci-Fi & Horror, Modern Greats, Screen 1 and 2 Dedicated High-definition television Movie Channels
- Sky News - Free-to-air
- Sky1
- Sky1 HD
- Sky2
- Sky3- Free-to-view
- Sky Sports 13
- Sky Sports Xtra
- Sky Sports HD 1-3
- Sky Sports News- Free-to-view on Freeview only
- Sky Real Lives
- Sky Real Lives +1
- Sky Real Lives 2
- Sky Real Lives HD
- Sky Travel
- Sky Vegas and Sky Poker
See also
External links
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