The Launch of Sky Network Television (1990)
Channel: Patrick Te Pou
Date: 2020-09-20

Pay television commenced on 18 May 1990 with Sky Network Television available to viewers at a cost for sports, news and movie channels, going by the names of Sky Sport, Sky News and Sky Movies respectively. This TVNZ News item was filed by Michael Wilson.

Special thanks to Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (TVNZ Collection) for the use of this clip.

HISTORY
Sky Network Television was founded by Craig Heatley, Terry Jarvis, Trevor Farmer, Alan Gibbs and Brian Green in 1987 as Sky Media Limited. 

In April 1988, the New Zealand Government announced its intention to deregulate broadcasting and open up the use of the UHF band for extra television services. Sky's original plans to transmit a single channel via satellite changed to use the UHF system to transmit multi-channels terrestrially, and Sky successfully obtained four national UHF networks in February 1990.

As Sky Media changed its name to Sky Network Television Limited in 1989, the company purchased the studios of Northern Television at 10 Panorama Road, Mt Wellington, from Wilson & Horton and began a $12 million refurbishment. ESPN, TVNZ, Tappenden Construction and the Todd Group became shareholders.

The concept of a pay television service was new to New Zealand and Sky had early problems. These included viewer acceptance of subscriber television. It faced difficulty in educating retailers and customers on the use of the original decoders. However, this problem was eased with the introduction of easier-to-use decoders that allowed greater viewer flexibility.

When Sky began in Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga in 1990, there were three channels on scrambled UHF frequencies: Sky Movies, Sky Sport and Sky News. In 1994, Sky launched two further channels, Discovery Channel and Orange, Discovery Channel broadcast on a channel already used by Trackside (formerly Action TV). 

Later, funding allowed Sky to extend its coverage throughout most of New Zealand: In 1991, the company expanded to Rotorua, Wellington and Christchurch. Then in 1994, the company expanded to Hawkes Bay, Manawatu, Southland and Otago, followed by the Wairarapa, Taupo, and Wanganui regions in 1995. Its final UHF expansion, in 1996, was to Taranaki, Whangarei, and eastern Bay of Plenty.

In April 1997, Sky introduced a nationwide analogue direct broadcasting via satellite (DBS) service over the Optus B1 satellite. This allowed it to offer more channels and interactive options, as well as nationwide coverage. It upgraded it to a digital service in December 1998.

The unreliability of the aging Optus B1 satellite was highlighted when the DBS service went offline just before 7pm NZ time (8am London, 3am New York) on 30 March 2006. The interruption affected service to over 550,000 customers and caused many decoders to advise customers of "rain fade." Due to excessive volume of calls to the Sky toll-free help-desk, Sky posted update messages on their website advising customers that they were working with Optus to restore service by midnight. Sky credited customers with one day's subscription fees as compensation for the downtime at a cost to the company of NZ$1.5 million. Sky switched its DBS service to the Optus D1 satellite on 15 November 2006. It later expanded its transponder capacity on this satellite to allow for extra channels and HD broadcasts.

Sky's UHF service was switched off on 11 March 2010 at midnight, and used a portion of the freed up UHF and radio spectrum to launch its joint venture, Igloo, in December 2012. The remaining unused spectrum was relinquished back to the Government and will be recycled to support new broadcasting ventures.

At the time of writing, Sky had 989,569 subscribers consisting of 585,248 satellite subscribers and 404,321 streaming subscribers.