What if Murdoch's Sky fails?

A bit of a different one here, and I'm afraid to non-Brits it might be rather 'WTF?'

We all know and hate Sky, led by the evil overlord Rubert Murdoch they throw around huge sums of money to dominate the TV market.
bSkyb has not always been the scary big behemoth they are today though, they were actually 2 competing companies at first, both pretty unsuccesful. It was only Murdoch's millions which kept the company afloat.

Perhaps the turning point was in their big gamble of outbidding ITV for the rights to the premier league....

So....perhaps ITV ended up with the premier league rights?
Maybe sky don't take the gamble, maybe the premier league clubs decide the better exposure ITV would give them makes up for the smaller bid.
For whatever reason Sky fails to get hold of its killer app....

Maybe the government decide that the merger of BSB and Sky can't go ahead for monopoly reasons? They want to keep some healthy competition going?

How could TV develop?

Maybe it could even remain more pan-European as it was in those early days?
 

MrP

Banned
We all know and hate Sky, led by the evil overlord Rubert Murdoch

This is true.

Hm, a Sky which doesn't drive ITV into such a poverty of quality that it physically hurts me to think of it. Leej, you have my interest. Proceed!
 
I worked for Sky for about half an hour. Got the introductory spiel on my first day in training and instead of putting up with it, walked out. This would be a great ATL.

Imagine a world where ITV remains a decent station!
 
I worked for Sky for about half an hour. Got the introductory spiel on my first day in training and instead of putting up with it, walked out. This would be a great ATL.

Any timeline with the POD being you staying at Sky would inevitably lead to a successful Operation Sea Lion.
 
Looking at Wikipedia, it seems that if there had been no merger, both services (Sky and BSB) might well have failed- they were both making heavy losses.

Of course it might be possible to get round this some way. Maybe if BSB hadn't been forced to rely on the D-MAC system, they mightn't have had all the technical problems they did and hadn't had the delayed launch- but then they lose part of their edge. Or possibly they might not have had to use their own satellite, with its limitations? (Got some other ideas from a certain Google result).

I'd rather not resort to having some convenient meteor hitting the Astra 1A satellite, tempted though I am. Seems a little too ASB for here...
 
From here it seems the IBA, the one-time regulatory body for independent television in the UK, didn't approve the merger, but it passed seeing as it happened in the transition period to the new regulator, the ITC, taking responsibility. (Thatcher seemed to be on board though...) If the IBA had got its way, maybe the merger might never have happened?

What then? I gather some of the other english-language stations broadcasting on astra at that time were not owned by Sky, so perhaps they'd be unaffected. Maybe a more pan-Eurpoean model might have continued for a long while, maybe not.
 
This is a very good where maybe ITV stays what it was set up to be, a franchised broadcaster.
Strange how ITV has now become the very thing it was set-up not be.
 
This is a very good where maybe ITV stays what it was set up to be, a franchised broadcaster.
Strange how ITV has now become the very thing it was set-up not be.

It still is, in a sense (at least for ITV1). It's just that due to mergers and acquisitions, most of the ITV franshise holders became one single company. Scottish and channel Television I think still hold out.

For that not to happen the entire POD would have to consist of no Broadcasting Act 1990, also partly seen as to blame for Rupert Murdoch's rise in the UK.
 
Looking at Wikipedia, it seems that if there had been no merger, both services (Sky and BSB) might well have failed- they were both making heavy losses.

Of course it might be possible to get round this some way. Maybe if BSB hadn't been forced to rely on the D-MAC system, they mightn't have had all the technical problems they did and hadn't had the delayed launch- but then they lose part of their edge. Or possibly they might not have had to use their own satellite, with its limitations? (Got some other ideas from a certain Google result).

I'd rather not resort to having some convenient meteor hitting the Astra 1A satellite, tempted though I am. Seems a little too ASB for here...

Yeah, it cetainly seems logical to me that they were both heading out of business if they failed to take off. According to wikipedia sky were losing millions a week at one point. If it had been a poorer man than Murdoch in the top seat they would have been long gone.

What happens when the companies fail though?
All the highly expensive infrastructure is already in place....I don't think it'd just be trashed. What could possibly happen to satalite TV in the UK?

Maybe cable becomes the dominant means of TV in the UK? I remember back when I was a kid it did seem to be picking up quite a lot, there was talk of it extending to my town...as it was though it didn't and cable remained a fringe thing. A sort of sky lite which some people in big cities have.
 

Thande

Donor
What about if Sky couldn't show all those American dramas before any of the terrestrial channels? I don't know why that might happen, but I know a lot of people who bought it primarily for that.
 
Maybe cable becomes the dominant means of TV in the UK? I remember back when I was a kid it did seem to be picking up quite a lot, there was talk of it extending to my town...as it was though it didn't and cable remained a fringe thing. A sort of sky lite which some people in big cities have.

Hmm, if cable were dominant in the UK, that would only be good news for our-then local telephone company, NYNEX. :D Maybe no NYNEX-Bell Atlantic merger could help things? In the US, the NYNEX-Bell Atlantic merger was when things started to go downhill, including selling off the cable TV franchises in the UK and Gibraltar.
 
Yeah, it cetainly seems logical to me that they were both heading out of business if they failed to take off. According to wikipedia sky were losing millions a week at one point. If it had been a poorer man than Murdoch in the top seat they would have been long gone.

Apparently still was after the merger until some new guy was put in charge to shake it up. not sure that would have worked with competition, though.

What happens when the companies fail though?
All the highly expensive infrastructure is already in place....I don't think it'd just be trashed. What could possibly happen to satalite TV in the UK?

The Marcopolo satellites BSB owned were sold to a Nrwegian company, and Sky wasn't even broadcasting on their own satellites- Astra being owned by a Luxembourgian company (SES Astra), which also broadcast other English-language channels not owned by Sky and various other european channels. So I think satellite TV (maybe free-to-air, as even Sky wasn't subscription by this point apparently) might continue.

Maybe cable becomes the dominant means of TV in the UK? I remember back when I was a kid it did seem to be picking up quite a lot, there was talk of it extending to my town...as it was though it didn't and cable remained a fringe thing. A sort of sky lite which some people in big cities have.

Possibly, though it'll take time. I remember when our area got cable back in '96, if that's what you're referring to.
 
Right, for Sky to fail would take several points of Departure..
1) Luxembourg gets allocated more than 1 Direct Broadcasting Satellite Channel at the WRAC-79 conference, thus there is no need for them to go down the Astra satellite route, & Sky as a result, cannot get dedicated transponders on Astra 1A...
2) The U.K goes down the unified video format route, and picks D2-Mac (as used by France & Germany), instead of D-Mac as the format for their DBS system, thus ensuring pan-European communality, and cheaper components...
3) British Satellite Broadcasting decides not to use the planar array "Squarial" as it's Unique Selling Point, but rather goes down the "Minidish" route, as used by Philips in their BSB systems, to undercut Sky.
This would bring BSB to market earlier, as design problems with the Squarial delayed BSB's launch by up to 6 months, and the 20cm diameter "Minidish" would have been used against Sky's 60cm diameter dish in a promotional campaign...
Example ,"Do you really want to fix a 3 Foot diameter "dustbin lid" to your wall, as Sky would have you do, or a 10 inch BSB "MiniDish"...? The Choice is yours...".
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