Satellite Television UK (SATV), one of the earliest satellite television channels, was set up by Brian Hayes, formerly controller of Thames Television. Originally it did not have a UK broadcasting licence, and was legally similar in that territory to the popular pirate radio stations of twenty years before. The channel broadcast a mixture of cheap Dutch-made programming (mainly from John de Mol Productions, the makers of Big Brother for Channel 4) and U.S. repeats from the OTS-2 Orbital Test Satellite to a pan-European audience.

In 1982 Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation acquired 80% of the company and renamed the service Sky Channel. The channel became widely available in Ireland in 1987. It was relaunched as Sky Television on February 5, 1989. It was one of the first Direct broadcast satellite (DBS) services in the world to become operational. The service had only four channels on its Astra satellite, which orbited at 19.2°E.

The Astra satellite was owned by a Luxembourg based consortium and controlled from there, but Sky's broadcasts originated in the UK and were subject to British regulation. Originally regulated by the Cable Authority, control passed to the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and finally to the Office of Communications (Ofcom).

Sky TV was relaunched in 1989. The impetus for the relaunch as Sky TV was the refusal of the ITC to allow Murdoch to participate in the British Satellite Broadcasting alliance. This created a battle to win customers in this new multichannel environment. In the end Sky's earlier launch and leasing of transponders on the Astra satellite network allowed it to overtake its rival. In contrast to Sky; BSB suffered from the burden of building and launching its own satellites, more ambitious and expensive technology and higher capital expenditure overall, such as the construction of its Marco Polo House HQ in London compared to Sky's industrial estate in Isleworth.

The failure of BSB in November 1990 led to a merger, although few programs acquired by BSB found their way to Sky One. The new company was called British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB). The merger may have saved Sky financially; despite its popularity, Sky had very few major advertisers to begin with, and was also beginning to suffer from embarrassing breakdowns. Acquiring BSB's healthier advertising contracts and equipment apparently solved these problems.

Sky have 8 million customers in the uk but thankfully at last they are losing more customers now then they are gaining, there churn rate is at present 11.7% and if they don't do something about it soon over the next couple of years there are proper f...ed, can't wait....

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