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Sky history
Sky company history timeline
By the time BSB finally launched its service in April 1990, SkyTV had already placed 750,000 satellite dishes.
The two companies caught the British television industry by surprise when they announced their intention to merge in November 1990.
British Sky Broadcasting was formed by the merger of Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting on 2 November 1990.
By September 1991, the weekly losses had been reduced to £1.5M a week, Rupert Murdoch said “there were strong financial marketing and political reason[s] for making the compromise merger instead of letting BSB die.
By March 1992, BSkyB was showing its first operating profits, of £100,000 per week, fully a year ahead of schedule.
Taking the company public also proved enormously profitable to Chisholm, who saw himself become one of the world's most highly paid television executives. It was at this point that Chisholm--by then leading Asia's StarTV satellite network, 64 percent of which Murdoch had purchased for $525 million in 1993--prepared to lead BSkyB into a public offering.
Completed in January 1995, the offering of 20 percent of the BSkyB's shares valued the company at £4 billion.
While BSkyB's fortunes continued to rise--with revenues topping £1 billion and pre-tax profits of £257 million by year-end 1996--the company also hastened to join the next, and perhaps greatest, revolution in television history: digital broadcasting.
To meet the demands of the competitive telecommunications industry, it launched its first digital service on October 1, 1998.
Since his appointment in 1999, BSkyB CEO Tony Ball had overseen the company's successful foray into the digital television industry.
The Economist explained the frenzy surrounding digital television in a May 2001 article, claiming that "digital brings many features, among them a clearer picture and the ability to squeeze more channels into the box.
By 2001, the firm's digital subscriber base had surpassed five million.
Ball announced his intentions to leave his post in October 2003, causing many to speculate about the company's future leadership.
In 2003, BSkyB expanded into music television with the launch of three new channels.
In 2007, the company was involved in a dispute with Sky over issues with carriage of the latter’s channels.
In November 2008, it was announced that the channels of the company would run on Virgin Media from November 13, 2008.
The agreement also included a scale of dividend payments: after reaching profitability, News International would receive 80 percent of the first £400 million in dividends, which would then be split 50-50 for 12 years until 2008, at which point BSB would receive 80 percent of the next £400 million.
Sky confirmed that the change in the name was given the formal approval of the shareholders, who met at the AGM on November 21, 2014.
Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting merged to form Sky UK on November 2, 1990. It then acquired Sky Italia in 2014 and also enjoyed more than 90 percent interest in Sky Deutschland in the same year.
The company recorded huge annual revenue of more than $11.25 as of 2014 reports.
Sky UK, as a result, announced that the Discovery Network’s channels would not be available from the first day of February 2017.
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Sky competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daily Mail | 1896 | $186.3M | 350 | - |
| Legion | 2007 | $2.9M | 50 | 8 |
| The Vernon Company | 1902 | $16.1M | 750 | - |
| Metro | - | $3.5M | 10 | 164 |
| The Diamondback | - | - | - | 9 |
| Lifetime | 1984 | $210.0M | 2,200 | 10 |
| Sunset | 1898 | $17.5M | 7 | 14 |
| Raleigh Studios | - | $950,000 | 16 | 3 |
| LaGuardia Performing Arts Center | - | $2.7M | 75 | - |
| Harper House | 1919 | $3.7M | 29 | - |
Sky history FAQs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of Sky, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about Sky. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at Sky. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by Sky. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of Sky and its employees or that of Zippia.
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