British Sky Broadcasting |
British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB - formerly two companies, Sky Television plc and British Satellite Broadcasting) is a company that operates Sky Digital, the most popular subscription television service in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It also produces TV content, and owns several TV channels. It is controlled by 36.8% shareholder News Corporation, an United States company chaired by Rupert Murdoch. For the year to 30 June 2005 BSkyB had turnover of British Pound4.048 billion, and made a profit of £631 million before tax and £425 million after tax. At 30 June 2005 it had 7.787 million direct to home customers and 11.659 million customers including households which subscribe to some of its channels via cable television.
=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.
==Joint ventures==
*Nickelodeon (TV channel) (50%) *The History Channel (UK) (50%) *Paramount Comedy (UK) (25%) *Sky News Australia (33.3%) Operates Sky News Australia with Publishing and Broadcasting Limited and Seven Network) *MUTV (33.3%) *National Geographic Channel (50%) *Music Choice (38.8%) *Attheraces (50%)
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 SES Astra satellites.
=History=
==Origins==
Satellite Television UK (SATV), one of the earliest satellite television channels, began broadcasting in April 1982 and originally did not have a UK broadcasting licence, rendering it legally similar in that territory to the popular pirate radio stations of twenty years before. The channel broadcast a mixture of cheap Dutch-made programming (mainly from Endemol, later the makers of Big Brother (UK TV series) for Channel 4) and U.S. repeats from the OTS-2 Orbital Test Satellite to a pan-European audience.
In 1982 .
The Astra satellite was owned by a Luxembourg based consortium, SES Astra and controlled from there, but Sky s broadcasts originated in the UK and were subject to British regulation. Originally regulated by the Cable Authority, control passed to the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and finally to the Office of Communications (Ofcom).
==BSB competition and merger==
The impetus for the relaunch as Sky Television was the refusal of the ITC to allow Murdoch to participate in the British Satellite Broadcasting alliance. This created a battle to win customers in this new multichannel environment. In the end Sky s earlier launch and leasing of transponders on the Astra satellite network allowed it to overtake its rival. In contrast to Sky; BSB suffered from the burden of building and launching its own satellites, more ambitious and expensive technology and higher capital expenditure overall, such as the construction of its Marco Polo House HQ in London compared to Sky s industrial estate in Isleworth.
In 1990 both companies were beginning to struggle with the burden of massive losses. The failure of BSB in November 1990 led to a merger, which was in effect a takeover by Sky - quality programming and superior technical quality had been no match for shrewd, aggressive marketing and pragmatic capital expenditure. 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 Marco Polo 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; despite its popularity, Sky had very few major advertisers to begin with. Acquiring BSB s healthier advertising contracts and equipment apparently solved the company s problems.
==Improving technology==
The Astra satellite network began with the launch of the analogue 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 so that they could be received using the same dish).
The launch of the first Astra 2 series 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. The Astra 2 fleet at 28.2° east maintains a geostationary orbit 35,600km from earth and was built by Hughes Electronics (now Boeing Satellite Systems) and EADS Astrium (now EADS Astrium).
==Terrestrial competition==
BSkyB has faced competition from terrestrial such as the .
In a response to the push towards Free to Air availability, BSkyB have marketed a free to view network (Freesat) to a limited extent.
=Future=
In 2006 BSkyB is planning to launch its own High-definition television (HDTV) services. BSkyB have announced that the service will require a display that has High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) or Digital Visual Interface (DVI) interfaces and is High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) compliant. SkyHD will be using the same Astra 2 satellites as Sky Digital, but using a new DVB standard, DVB-S2. SkyHD will also be using MPEG4 for video compression rather than MPEG2 that is used for Sky Digital. BSkyB started testing HDTV broadcasts in June 2005.
The Economist has suggested that News Corporation would eventually like to merge BSkyB with its US satellite operation, DirecTV and possibly its Star TV network to form a global satellite TV company.
=Technology and conditional access=
See: Sky Plus Sky utilizes the VideoGuard pay-TV scrambling system owned by News Datacom, 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, this leads to many innovative features such as instant Pay-Per-View (due to the ability to record encrypted streams and decrypt on play). 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, early in 2004, this additional £10 charge was quashed (albeit only to subscribers whose package includes two or more premium channels) to encourage existing owners to upgrade seamlessly.
=Management=
Rupert Murdoch s News International (a major subsidary of News Corporation) was originally the sole owner of BSkyB but currently has a 38% stake in the company. News Corp also fully owns Sky Italia and about 78% of New Zealand s SKY Network Television.
The first chief executive officer 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.
=Sky and cable television=
The other two major pay-TV operators in the United Kingdom are the cable operators NTL and Telewest. NTL does not produce a large amount of content of its own. Telewest owns the Flextech production company which produces several channels, but these are low profile compared to Sky s main channels. They broadcast the main Sky channels, and this is one of their principal selling points. Thus they are not only Sky s rivals, but also its two most important customers. They compete with Sky on price, and are able to diferentiate themselves from Sky through their ability to offer bundles of services such as internet access and telephone service. Sky is allowed to restrict certain channels such as Sky Sports Xtra to its direct customers, who are also able to use certain interactive features of its programming which are not available to cable viewers. Competition between Sky and the two cable companies is regulated by Ofcom.
=See also=
=External links=
*[http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtmlticker=bsy.uk&script=11931&item_id= home.html Corporate site] *[http://www.sky.com/ Sky TV homepage] *[http://www.sky.tv.br SKY Brazil]|
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