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
Broadcasting Act 1990 Broadcasting Act 1990 The Broadcasting Act 1990 is a law of the British parliament, initiated in part due to a 1989 European Council Directive (89/552), also known as the Television Without Frontiers directive. The aim of the Act was to liberalise and deregulate the British broadcasting industry by promoting competition; ITV, in particular, had earlier been described by Margaret Thatcher as "the last bastion of restrictive practices". The act came about after the finding from the Peacock Committee. It led directly to the abolition of the Independent Broadcasting Authority and its replacement with the Independent Television Commission and Radio Authority