Sky (New Zealand)
Sky Network Television Limited, more commonly known as Sky, is a New Zealand broadcasting company that provides pay television services via satellite, media streaming services, and broadband internet services. Sky had 914,368 residential television subscribers consisting of 448,290 satellite subscribers and 409,582 streaming subscribers. Additionally, Sky had 50,867 broadband customers. It also provides free-to-air services through its subsidiary Sky Free, which it acquired from Warner Bros. Discovery on 1 August 2025. Despite the similarity of name, branding and services, such as Sky Go and MySky shared with its Comcast-owned, European equivalent, Sky Group, there is no connection between the companies.
History
The company was founded by Craig Heatley, Terry Jarvis, Trevor Farmer and Alan Gibbs in May 1987 as Sky Media Limited. It was later incorporated on 26 November, five weeks after the stock market crash. It was formed to investigate beaming sports programming into nightclubs and pubs using high performance 4-metre satellite dishes by Jarvis and an engineering associate Brian Green, but was redirected into pay television following successful bidding in early 1990 for four groups of UHF frequencies in the Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga regions. Initially operating only in the Auckland region, Sky contracted Broadcast Communications to provide the broadcast service and transmission from its Panorama Road studios, formerly owned by defunct broadcaster Northern Television. The first Sky subscriber was former Speaker of the House of Representatives Jonathan Hunt, according to Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand.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.
On 10 December 1997, the company was listed on NZX.
UHF service
Sky originally launched on 8 May 1990 as an analogue UHF service. Subscribers required a VideoCrypt decoder and a UHF aerial, both of which were supplied upon joining Sky. The signal was sent with the picture scrambled using VideoCrypt technology; the decoder was used to unscramble the picture. Sky Movies was the only channel broadcast in NICAM stereo; Sky Sport and Sky News were broadcast in mono. The original decoder didn't actually support stereo sound; if a subscriber wanted to watch Sky Movies in stereo, the subscriber had to feed the audio from another source such as a NICAM stereo capable VCR.Free-to-air broadcasts were shown in the early morning hours on Sky News and between 5 pm and 6 pm on Sky Sport until mid-1991 which meant those without a Sky subscription could view the broadcasts without a UHF decoder by tuning their TV to the Sky News or Sky Sport UHF channel, as the signals were not scrambled during those times.
The original channel lineup consisted of three channels, Sky Movies, Sky Sport and Sky News. Sky rapidly won long term rights from US sports network ESPN as well as CNN and HBO providing it with a supply of sports, news and movies for the three channels. Sky News screened a mixture of CNN International and BBC news bulletins and a replay of the 6 pm One Network News bulletin from TVNZ, later changing to a replay of the 3 News 6 pm bulletin from TV3. The Sky News channel was later discontinued and became branded as a CNN channel.
In 1994, Sky launched two further channels Discovery Channel and Orange; Orange later became known as Sky 1 and then The Box. Discovery Channel broadcast on a channel already used by Trackside. The Trackside service was available free to air to anyone who could receive the UHF signal without the need for a Sky decoder, Discovery Channel screened outside of racing hours and was only available to Sky subscribers.
Orange broadcast from 10 am onwards each day with Juice TV screening outside of Orange's broadcast hours, Juice TV was available originally free to air. Cartoon Network shared the same channel as Orange from 1997 to 2000 screening between 6 am and 4 pm with Orange screening after 4 pm. In 2000, Cartoon Network was replaced with Nickelodeon. Juice ended its UHF carriage in 2002, after a three-year period where it was encrypted on the service.
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 Hawke's Bay, Manawatu, Southland and Otago, followed by the Wairarapa, Taupō, and Wanganui regions in 1995. Its final UHF expansion, in 1996, was to Taranaki, Whangārei, and eastern Bay of Plenty Region.
An agreement with The Warehouse saw the retailer selling UHF subscriptions in 67 of its 78 outlets from October 2002. These were all located within Sky's UHF service zones.
Following the launch of the digital satellite service in 1998, Sky began reducing services on the UHF platform. NICAM stereo was eventually removed from Sky Movies in 2001 after moving its transmitter network from Telecom NZ to BCL while the CNN channel was discontinued in 2004 with the UHF frequencies issued to Māori Television. It was also relatively easy to hack, when, in 2002, descriptions of a computer program descrambling the signals was mentioned on Jeremy Bertenshaw's website circulated beyond his friend circle.
Sky announced in July 2009 that it would no longer accept new UHF subscriptions and that the equipment to replace the UHF transmitters had become impossible to find due to lack of production, as some of its transmitters began to collapse. There were reportedly 25,000 subscribers to the UHF service in 2009, a far cry from the 300,000 of 1995.
Sky switched off its analogue UHF TV service on 11 March 2010 at midnight.
Sky 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.
Satellite service
Plans for a satellite service emerged in November 1996, set to launch in April or May 1997. The five channels already on UHF were being joined by five more: ESPN 2, a new version of Orange carrying British programmes and dramas, Hallmark Channel, and two further channels which were still being considered.In April 1997, Sky introduced a nationwide analogue direct broadcasting via satellite 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.
Image:SKYNZRemote.JPG|thumb|right|200px|Pace remote control used for original Sky digital service
While some channels on the UHF platform were shared with other channels, Sky Digital screened the same channels 24 hours a day. Orange extended to screening 24 hours a day on Sky Digital but was only available to Sky UHF subscribers between 4 pm and 6 am. Discovery Channel was available to Sky Digital subscribers 24 hours a day but UHF subscribers could only receive the channel outside of Trackside's broadcast hours.
Digital versions of free-to-air channels have always been available on Sky Digital meaning that some subscribers did not need to purchase any equipment to receive digital TV when New Zealand switched off its analogue service. While most free-to-air channels have been available on Sky Digital, TVNZ channels TVNZ 1 and TVNZ 2 did not become available until the end of 2001, when the two parties entered an agreement to carry the channels in November of that year. This caused the channel line-up to be rearranged; in addition, BBC World was added, in a non-exclusive deal, which did not affect overnight carriage of the channel on TV One.
A SkyMail email service was featured for a time starting November 2002, but was later pulled due to lack of interest.
The unreliability of the ageing Optus B1 satellite was highlighted when the DBS service went offline just before 7 p.m. NZST 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, announced in July, on 15 November 2006. The satellite enabled the addition of fifteen new channels, including new services for young audiences. It later expanded its transponder capacity on this satellite to allow for extra channels and HD broadcasts.
My Sky launch
On 5 December 2005, Sky released its own digital video recorder, which was an upgraded set top box similar to Foxtel IQ in Australia or TiVo in the United States, called My Sky. The PVR's hard disc had a storage of 160 GB. About 10,000 units were sent in its first year, which was half of what was planned due to logistical issues.Early boxes had flaws in the EPG, which did not work in real time, causing disruption to recordings, while the default channel when switched on was Sky's preview channel, instead of the last channel the viewer watched.
This generation of boxes was replaced by My Sky HDi when it launched on 1 July 2008. These boxes allow connection of up to four satellites which can work with its four TV tuner cards in any combination. The device has a 320GB HDD. The quality of My Sky HDi is 576i via component and 720/1080i via HDMI.
On 1 July 2011, a version of the same decoder with a 1TB hard drive was launched as My Sky+. Much like what happened with the previous My Sky model, the launch was plagued by similar problems, with some subscribers not receiving their units until after 9 September 2011, ten days after the start of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.