Sky Television plc Sky Television plc Sky Television plc was a public limited company which operated a nine-channel satellite television service, launched by Rupert Murdoch's News International on 5 February 1989. Sky Television and its rival British Satellite Broadcasting suffered large financial losses and merged on 2 November 1990 to form British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). Programming merger took effect on 1 December 1990. Sky Television plc was originally Satellite Television Ltd. (SATV), a consortium set up by Brian Haynes in November 1980. Haynes was a former journalist employed at Thames Television. In 1979 he produced a documentary for the "TV Eye" strand which
Now (British TV channel) the evenings, and arts programmes at weekends. The channel was promoted under the slogan "The Channel For Living". Now was broadcast throughout BSB's short spell on air from March to December 1990 on the Marcopolo satellites. In November 1990, BSB merged with Sky to form British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). BSkyB decided to streamline the channels available on both services. Now was replaced with Sky News, which Sky Television had broadcast on the Astra 1A satellite. Now ceased broadcasting on Saturday 1 December 1990 at 1am. The ending of Now faded into the clock of Sky News, and the newsreader welcomed