24 hour news channels - Celebrating 25 years of Sky News

By Simon Wright – Follow me on Twitter @Siwri88

The start of February saw 25 years since this was launched:

Sky News has come so far in the quarter of a century it has been on our TV screens. Not always easily accessible in its early inception, Sky News is now widely available on a number of different devices, from freeview platforms and computer-generated apps to the stunning iPad app which is among one of the best in the business.

Sky has always been the first place for breaking news with its dedicated team of journalists and reporters ready to bring the story to you first, the viewer. I know that it is the channel I watch if I’m after a big story. Sky News were the first to cover the stories that mattered. From the celebration of Tony Blair’s landslide election victory in 1997 and the birth of the Royal Baby last year to the horrifying scenes of international terrorism in New York, Bali, Madrid and London over the past 13 years – as well as groundbreaking coverage of the UK riots in August 2011.

However, Sky and its main competitors are now facing new competition in the evolving world of digital journalism. So, can it be successful and still remain at the forefront of our news for the next quarter of a century.

Slow start

The first bulletin was broadcast at 6pm on Sunday, 5 February 1989. Today, three senior figures in presenter Kay Burley, controversial political editor Adam Boulton and crime correspondent Martin Brunt are still with Sky, just like they were on launch night.

It was a slow start at a time where news was still not hugely accessible. Sky was launched at a time where only CNN was a 24-hour news network in America. The traditional ‘Newsflash’ from terrestrial platforms was the way we got the main news coverage in the late 1980s and early 1990s. There was no internet, social media was a dream away and tablets were just know as a cleaning aid and nothing more.

Rupert Murdoch, for whatever criticism he might deserve in regards to the News International phone hacking scandal two years ago does have to take the credit for keeping Sky News on the air in its early days. Operating on a £40m budget and with a lack of subscribers, Sam Chisholm proposed to Murdoch that Britain’s first 24 hour news channel was to be closed down to save money. The tycoon stuck to his guns though and gradually, Sky started to make its impact further for it. It was quickly respected in the House of Commons and throughout the political circle and started winning awards for its coverage – starting with the Bishopgate IRA bombing in 1993.

Its wall-to-wall coverage of the OJ Simpson trial throughout the pursuit of Simpson through America to the trial in 1995 was groundbreaking. It won Sky a lot of praise and I personally saw it as their big breakthrough onto the news spectrum in this country.

Breaking news

All of this came as BSkyB went under numerous launches on a yearly basis. Sky News underwent new looks (images below) in 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2000. With flashy graphics, colourful ways to promote the news through rapid technological advances and the development of Sky News Active in the year 2000, they continued to evolve and respond to changes in the way we consumed news.

  

Various Sky News idents from 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1998

The Simpson trial of the mid-90s was big for Sky News but they had shown what they were capable of before that. They covered the late Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 with great authority and the same occured with a tearful Margaret Thatcher’s departure from Downing Street after resigning as Prime Minister in the same year. They had provided in-depth coverage of the tight 1992 General Election and have made their election coverage even better through a variety of new aspects such as interactive voting and 3D visuals – not just for the UK but also for election night in the United States.

In 1997, it was Martin Stanford who had the difficulty of breaking the news to the nation of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash in Paris. While the BBC won plenty of acclaim for the way they handled such a sad and emotional story, Sky weren’t far behind. Their finest moment came four years later when the world was experiencing a horrifying day.

It was approaching 1.50pm on a normal day. The date was Tuesday, 11 September 2001 and nothing remarkable was happening, both in our normal lives and at Sky studios. That was about to change though as Kay Burley was given the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York. What followed was some of the most horrific and vivid moments of the 21^st century. That day, our lives changes forever. In a book, ’20 Years of Breaking News’ Burley revealed: “Not long afterwards the South Tower collapsed. It took less than fifteen seconds to implode. Neither Jeremy (Thompson), nor I said anything. Nothing needed to be said. More than a hundred storeys and thousands of lives lost in as long as it took you to read this paragraph.”

Sky won a BAFTA award for their coverage of 9/11, a feat repeated with the Soham murders in 2003. Many other awards have followed since alongside widespread praise and of course, some criticism along the way.

However, our news would be in a poorer place without Sky News.

It doesn’t always work and the future

24 hour news channels haven’t always had success. ITN tried it with the disastrous ITV News Channel at the start of the millennium. With ratings more accustomed to an episode of Eldorado, the plug was pulled on ITN’s 24 hour failure in December 2005. It hadn’t been helped by the collapse of the ITV Digital platform three years earlier.

The BBC entered the market eight years after Sky and BBC News 24 has been a stable challenger to Sky News since launching on Sunday, 9 November 1997. Despite the occasional blunder, such as Simon McCoy (a former Sky anchor) holding a pad of paper rather than a tablet last year, they have managed to survive in such stiff competition.

However, the way we get news continues to change. The advancement in social media means Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have become very popular tools for a journalist or even for an amateur filmmaker. Sky used some of this during the UK riots in 2011 – journalist Mark Stone filming on his mobile phone some of the unbelievable scenes in his hometown of Clapham. Stone would later be interviewed for our radio programme ‘The Current Affairs Show’ in 2012 about that night. In an interview for our journalism show with one of my fellow University of Northampton colleagues, he said: “Some of them were almost feral; the image that strikes me is the kids pulling the TV’s off the wall at Ladbrokes. It was the most extraordinary image.”

Rather than compete against them at their own game, 24 hour news channels such as Sky News and BBC News 24 have decided to integrate them rather than beat them. It is a clever strategy and I think it means their future is guaranteed, even if they might not quite have the impact they have had over the past decade or two.

I believe 24 hour news channels have a bright future. They have and continue to adapt well to changes, both in technological advancements and the way news can be broadcasted. I congratulate Sky News and Sky Television as a whole on reaching 25 years and I’m confident that with the tremendous team of reporters, presenters, journalists and people who work behind the scenes at Sky studios, they will achieve another 25 years continuing to break the news first.

Categories: 1989, 9/11, London, New York, Royal Family, Sky News, Tony Blair, TV, UK