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 21st 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.
