SKY ARTS (DEFUNCT CHANNEL)

'Sky Arts' was an opt-out service from the ''Sky News'' television channel on the Marcopolo satellite.

Contents

History

Footnotes

History

Originally Sky Arts was planned as a full channel on the Astra satellite. Promotional material broadcast during the the launch of Sky Television in 1989 indicated the channel would appear later that year along with The Disney Channel.^[2] Neither channel did appear at the promised time, Disney due to disputes with Sky whilst Sky Arts was apparently cancelled.
Due to the merger of British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) and Sky Television to form BSkyB in 1990 the need for an opt-out service came about. As the dominant partner in the merger, BSkyB had replaced the BSB arts channel ''Now'' with Sky Television's news channel ''Sky News''. However, contracts were still in place for some shows produced for Now to be shown by BSkyB. BSkyB solved this by occasionally opting-out of the regular Sky News service during weekends on the Marcopolo satellite (that which was owned by BSB prior to the merger and which carried ''Now'') and showing the programmes as part of a strand entitled Sky Arts.^[3][4] Sky Arts did not opt-out of Sky News on the Astra satellite which carried Sky Television prior to the merger.
After all outstanding programmes had been broadcast, Sky Arts was closed down and the full Sky News service was broadcast on both Marcopolo and Astra.
In 2005, Sky completed their purchase of the Artsworld channel and on March 1 2007 they renamed it Sky Arts.

Footnotes

1. TV History - ukfree.tv - independent digital TV and switchover advice
2. TV Ark:Sky TV Launch Promo
3. AnalogueSat:The BSB/Sky Merger
4. Murdoch on Astra...versus BSB on Marco Polo