British Satellite Broadcasting (PatrZDZ's vision)

**British Satellite Broadcasting** (**BSB**) is a television company, based in London, that provides direct broadcast satellite television services to the United Kingdom, Ireland and Scotland. The company was announced to merge with Sky Television plc (now simply Sky plc) in November 1990, but such merger was blocked due to regulatory issues. As a result, BSB and Sky's operations and channels kept their separate identities.

BSB started broadcasting on 14th September 1986 and has 5.6 million subscribers as of the end of 2019. BSB's channels' diamond-base logos were introduced on 25th March 1990. BSB is currently owned by British Satellite Broadcasting plc, whose shareholders are Granada (26.6%), Pearson (25.6%), VivendiUniversal (23.6%), Carlton Communications (12.4%) and Currys plc (11.5%). BSB's channel list originally had 5 channels, that number has grown since then.

From launch until June 2012, its headquarters and broadcasting facilities were at Marco Polo House in Battersea, London. These operations then moved to Chiswick Park, a 'campus'-style development on the site of a former derelict London Transport bus depot in West London.

## Development

In January 1977, the World Administrative Radio Conference assigned each country five high-powered direct broadcast by satellite channels for domestic use. In 1982, after being awarded two of the channels, the BBC proposed its own satellite service, but the government imposed two conditions on it:

Use of a satellite built by United Satellite, a consortium of British Aerospace and Matra Marconi Space (now Airbus Defense and Space), with costs estimated at £24 million per year.
A supplementary charter was agreed in May 1983 which allowed the BBC to borrow up to £225 million to cover the cost of the project, as it was not allowed to call on public funds, nor use existing sources of revenue to fund the project.
During Autumn 1983, the cost of Unisat was found to be greatly underestimated and the new Home Secretary announced the three remaining channels would be given to the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) to allow the private sector to compete against the BBC in satellite broadcasting. Within a few months, the BBC started talking with the IBA about a joint project to help cover the cost. Subsequently, the government allowed the IBA to bring in private companies to help cover the costs (dubbed as the "Club of 21"):

* BBC – 50%
* ITV franchises – 30%
* Virgin/Thorn EMI/Granada TV Rental/Pearson Longman and Consolidated Satellite Broadcasting – 20%

Within a year, the consortium made it clear that the original launch date of 1986 would be delayed to 1989, while also asking the government to allow it to tender out the building of the new satellite system to help reduce cost. On 15 June 1985, the project failed when consortium concluded that the cost of set-up was not justifiable. The BBC stated the costs were prohibitive because the government insisted that the "Club of 21" should pay for the costs of constructing and launching a dedicated satellite.

### IBA satellite franchise

On 2 April 1986, the IBA convinced the Home Secretary to revive the DBS project but under different conditions, broadly based on a report drawn up by John Jackson, by inviting the private-sector companies to apply for a new television franchise via satellite to provide a commercial service on the IBA's three DBS channels (of the five in total allocated to the United Kingdom). One of the conditions imposed on applicants by the IBA was that they use a new untried transmission standard, D-MAC. This was part of the European Communities' support for the HD-MAC high-definition television standard which was being developed by Philips and other European companies. The technology was still at the laboratory stage and was incompatible with previous standards: HD-MAC transmissions could not be received by existing television sets which used PAL or SECAM standards. The condition to use a high-power (230 watt) satellite was dropped, and no winner was precluded from buying a foreign satellite system.

The IBA received five major contenders with serious bids for the direct broadcast satellite franchises. It also received submissions from The Children's Channel and ITN to make sure their programmes were used on any successful bid.

British Satellite Broadcasting won the 15-year franchise on 11 December 1986 to operate the DBS system, with a licence to operate three channels. BSB forecast 400,000 homes would be equipped during its first year, but some doubts were cast as to whether this was possible. The Cable Authority welcomed the service, believing it would encourage more users, especially with its dedicated movie network.

### New shareholders

Following Monopolies & Mergers' block of its attempted merger with Sky and Bond International's exit from the venture, BSB's administration and shareholders needed to find new investors who'd be able to stop the company from going under. Carlton Communications - which made a failed bid for London' ITV weekday franchise in 1985, Dixons, and Pathé - made a bid to acquire a major stake in the company in order to revert the situation. BSB accepted the offer, forming a new shareholder structure.

In June 1999 Pathé merged with Vivendi, with the exchange ratio for the merger fixed at three Vivendi shares for every two Pathé shares. The Wall Street Journal estimated the value of the deal at US$2.59 billion. Following the completion of the merger, Vivendi retained Pathé's interests in British Satellite Broadcasting.