Sky Television (BSkyB) - Dealer / Retailer Information (post BSB merger) Feb 1991

A video advertising the benefits of Sky Television (BSkyB) and was played in shops in 1991. Sky merged with BSB a few months earlier and was now know as BSkyB.

[@hassansyed5661]

I wish to go back in this time and see these things happening in front of me. Analog Dish antenna days were best.

[@antster1983]

Opening the video is Gary Davey, deputy managing director & director of programming for BSkyB (and Sky before the merger). For a time he shared the deputy MD post with Ian Clubb of BSB before Clubb left to take the helm of First Choice Holidays.

[@2frate]

This was around the time we first got sky and boy it was a game changer !
Exciting times. Having films on all the time and a 24 news channel was fantastic. When sky news was good!

[@christopherhulse8385]

I had Sky for free from 1989 up till 1991 when they started charging for channels.

[@hassansyed5661]

Was it free to air in 189 to 1991?

[@chriswathen9612]

@@hassansyed5661 Basic-tier channels were free until late 1993

[@hassansyed5661]

@@chriswathen9612 What was the subscription card price back in 1992?

[@chriswathen9612]

@@hassansyed5661 I guess the same as here -£9.99 for one film channel or £14.99 for both. Sky Sports was at first soft-encrypted, you did need a decoder but didn't have to pay a subscription. When Sky Movies Gold launched it was a bonus channel for people who took a film channel so nothing extra for that. And everything basic tier was free in 1992.

[@hassansyed5661]

@@chriswathen9612Nice old memories 🤘

[@darren2514fv]

A lot of this was a result of pressure from the Hollywood studios

[@Bazz1982]

Funny, never know Love at first side was a British tv-format, it looks very much like the Dutch one

[@rtc9063]

It was obscene the money Sky and BSB paid for movie rights trying to get the best movie channel. It’s no wonder they had to merge to save the two of them from going bankrupt. Like TV-am, they rode out the storm and then look at the profits they made

[@img00]

The idea of The Movie Channel being the primary one didn't last too long. It always felt as the "also ran" one to me.

[@chriswathen9612]

This was sort of formalised in 1997 when The Movie Channel became 'Sky Movies Screen 2'. Possibly at first there were ex-BSB inherited rights to films which could only be shown on TMC which were more desirable than those Sky had secured for themselves previously? TMC's 1991-1993 ident was pretty stunning though, it certainly looked like it was intended to be the primary film channel.

[@img00]

@@chriswathen9612 apparently it was a reuse of a Movie of the Week intro from NBC/ABC (one of the networks anyway). A bit like how the first Sky Movies Gold intro was a feature promo ident on Sky Movies.
I always preferred the Sky Movies ident of that era though. Always felt "special" but both were great.

[@chriswathen9612]

@@img00 I think it was both but not both from the same country - wasn't the animation used by NBC in the US and also the ABC in Australia? Neither had the same bombastic soundtrack which Sky had though. I did always assume Sky commissioned that themselves until I recently found out the 1989-93 Sky Channel/One jingle was bought on the cheap after being composed for and rejected by Central News East so who knows! I still think it holds up incredibly well today for a 30 year old piece of CGI. The original Sky Movies ident was great too but sort of felt cheapened after they insisted on calling the channel 'Sky Movies Plus' but never re-edited the original ident to show that on screen. A bit surprising that the weird situation of having two film channels with very similar names survived a further 3 rebrandings before they finally did something about it in 1997.

[@img00]

@@chriswathen9612 Apparently the Sky Movies Plus bit was because they started showing PPV events on the channel but yes, it always bugged me that they never updated the main ident to match (especially when they did do updates for the break bumpers).
The original Sky One ident definitely still holds up.. That 89-95 era was definitely the best from an ident perspective 😊

[@1990chrism]

Am I right in thinking they left out all of the non-sky branded channels on the Astra satellite, where in effect it appears there was quite few more than 6 channels available in 1991 on the Astra satellite in english.
seems odd they wouldn't mention the other channels, was this to avoid making Marco Polo customers feel ripped off post merger?

[@chriswathen9612]

Probably because the non-Sky English language channels on Astra were there of their own volition and not Sky's. Sky was not involved in their advertising revenue and could not control their carriage. It wasn't until the launch of Sky multichannels where Sky handled the subscription for some other broadcasters and could sell space for listings in their paper TV guide that Sky had any reason to acknowledge the other channels existed. Also, immediately post-merger I would imagine they still thought the BSB Marcopolo system might continue to be viable as a marketable product, possibly as an alternative that would be more acceptable to homes that didn't want a 60-80cm dish to use Astra. However that system could in practice only accomodate 6 channels so there was only ever capacity to add one more channel to it without reducing power or launching more satellites (or running channels on timeshares). Meanwhile Astra had launched with space for 16 and capacity increased to 32 channels in 1991 (and more after that). I would imagine at this point Sky already had plans to launch more channels within their own operation and as such I doubt Sky wanted to signpost how many channels Marcopolo viewers would or could end up missing if they still intended to support it, hence the merger presentation being designed to make the two systems look equivalent. Of course transponders on Astra were quickly swallowed up and, technically better or not, Marcopolo just couldn't compete with such limited capacity and as such it was discontinued at the end of 1992.

[@rachel.mcgowan]

They show several non-Sky channels, Lifestyle and Screensport were owned by WH Smith, MTV was MTV obviously and not sure who owned The Children's Channel but it had nothing to do with Sky.

[@musmodtos]

Yeah with the above, it's easy to conflate "Sky" the broadcaster with the sort of service is becomes in the few years after this. At this point Sky broadcast their channels on Astra but Astra is also broadcasting other things (like MTV and the WHSmith services) which were also received on a Sky box.
The distinction between Sky and BSB was a lot more nuanced than it was made out at the time, Sky were a broadcaster with a line of hardware trying to engage people on their Astra services, and BSB was a top-to-bottom broadcaster with its own hardware and even own satellites.

[@aink9106]

BSB Marco Polo Sky Astra
Change Channels 1990-1991 1:31
5 Channels/4 Channels
Dec/1990
(Galaxy/NOW)
Sky One/Sky News
Apr/1991
5 Channels/6 Channels
(Power Station)
Sky Movies +

[@jamesmitchell8922]

Who helped Sky? The Simpsons