The journey from The Sports Channel to Sky Sports, United Kingdom as well as Irelands premier sports channel.
Sky Sports is British Sky Broadcastings premier Round-the-clock sports news channel in England and Ireland. British Sky Broadcasting is a satellite pay TV company and along with Sky Sports it also has Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra that exist like a Premium package over the basic Sky Sports. Since its inception in 1990, Sky Sports has played a very prominent role in commercializing British sport. This channel has also been a key player in making a paradigm shift in the organizational structure of sports broadcasting by being the first to support and encourage the Premier League to break out from the Football League in 1992.
Sky Sports began as The Sports Channel in March 1990 as Sky Television did not have a privileged sports channel in the beginning SpessartNews.Com. Sports programs were broadcast sometimes from this channel but instead of launching a sports channel of their very own, Sky Television chose to invest in Eurosport. Upon the launch of Sky Television in February 1989, Eurosport was marketed as one of its four channels.
British Sky Broadcasting and Sky Television announced a merger in the year 1990. Initially launched as British Sky Broadcasting, the Sports Channel was relabeled Sky Sports when it was finally launched in April, 1991 on the SES Astra IB Satellite television. Eurosport discontinued its partnership with Sky Television upon the launch of Sky Sports but remained available on the SES Astra platform.
Sky Sports quickly developed into just about the most successful channels in the Sky system. It was from September 1992, that Sky began selling Sky Sports like a subscription channel. After Sky Movies, it was the 2nd channel in the Sky system that was encrypted through the Video Crypt system. Though Sky Sports began by broadcasting sports such as golf and rugby, it soon obtained the rights to air Italian and German League Football thereby improving its popularity base.
In 1992/93, together with the formation of the Premier League, Sky Sports had become the most favored sports channel following a purchase of the exclusive broadcasting rights of Premier League Football in England and Ireland for the period of 5 years.
Sky Sports also operates Sky Sports news, the Round-the-clock sports news channel which was launched in 1998. The look of this news channel was revamped during 2007. This was just in time with the football season. Although the main structure of presentation was preserved, the colour displays of the information box, the ticker at the bottom of the screen and the breaking news ticker were changed http://sportfanatick.com. A brand new studio, new theme tune and new title sequences were also a part of the revamping. Nevertheless the broadcasting format continued to be at the 4:3 and did not get up-graded to the Widescreen 16:9 formats.
Till date Sky Sports is related more with football compared to any other sports. It is perhaps due to this reason that this channel does tend to experience some decrease in viewership throughout the summers when no football is played.