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
Satellite television the same time can allow free-to-air channels to be viewed even by the people with standard equipment available in the market. Some countries operate satellite television services which can be received for free, without paying a subscription fee. This is called free-to-air satellite television. Germany is likely the leader in free-to-air with approximately 250 digital channels (including 83 HDTV channels and various regional channels) broadcast from the Astra 19.2°E satellite constellation. These are not marketed as a DBS service, but are received in approximately 18 million homes, as well as in any home using the "Sky Deutschland" commercial DBS system.