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
British Satellite Broadcasting high definition TV but European TV manufacturers developed patented variants and successfully lobbied regulators such that it was adopted by the EU as the standard for all direct broadcast satellites. This had the effect that the low-cost non-European TV manufacturers would not only have to pay royalties to the EU manufacturers but would also not have direct access to the technology, and hence would always be behind with new developments. In the UK, the Independent Broadcasting Authority developed a variant, D-MAC, which had marginal audio channel improvements, and insisted on its use by the satellite service to be licensed by