Granada plc another since 1935. It was awarded the North of England ITV franchise in 1954, broadcasting as Granada Television. The company also established a chain of television rental shops from 1959 onwards. Granada entered the publishing business in the 1960s: it combined its operations into the publisher Hart-Davis, MacGibbon in 1972. William Collins, Sons acquired Granada Publishing in 1983. During the 1980s, Granada became involved in the British Satellite Broadcasting satellite television company. This went on air in March 1990, but merged with Sky Television plc in November 1990, to form British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB), in which Granada had a minority
British Satellite Broadcasting launch of its own satellites costing an estimated £200 million. When BSB finally went on air in March 1990, 13 months after Sky, the company's technical problems were resolved and its programming was critically acclaimed. However its D-MAC receivers were more expensive than Sky's PAL equivalents and incompatible with them. Many potential customers compared the competition between the rival satellite companies to the format war between VHS and Betamax home video recorders, and chose to wait and see which company would win outright, in order to avoid buying potentially obsolete equipment. Both BSB and Sky companies had begun to struggle