Broadcasting of sports events events from the 1980s, mainly horse races and so-called minority sports. In the early 1990s this arrangement was shaken up by the arrival of pay-TV in the form of BSkyB. Their dedicated sports channels have since become the only place for some major sports to be seen. Starting in 2006 the Irish company Setanta Sports emerged as a challenger to Sky Sports' dominance of the British pay-TV sports market; however, Setanta's UK channel went into bankruptcy administration and off the air in 2009. Between 2009 and 2013 ESPN made an attempt to challenge Sky Sports before its British operations were
National Broadcasting Service but progressively lost its traditional listening audience due to a weakening of the quality of its broadcast signal and a reduction in allocated financial resources to upgrade its equipment and programming. The state media house would undergo yet another name change in 2001 to become the National Broadcasting Network (NBN). Due to financial losses, both radio and TV broadcast entities of NBN ceased operations at midnight on January 15, 2005. An era in radio broadcasting had come to an end. Many well-known radio personalities began or established their careers behind the microphones of Radio Guardian/Radio 610/NBS Radio. Among the many