New Year Programme Changes For Sky Televsion

Friday, 7 December, 2001

SKY Television confirmed today that from 1 January 2002, Granada UKTV will no longer be part of the SKY Digital channel line-up.

Granada UKTV, which relies only on Granada as its programme supplier, has been available on the SKY Digital satellite platform since January 1999.

Travis Dunbar, SKY Director of Entertainment said, “Our research clearly demonstrated that UKTV is one of our least watched channels and our subscribers frequently commented that there was no BBC product and far too many repeats”.

“Recently Granada ceased production of their lifestyle programmes which resulted in more dissatisfied UKTV viewers – in line with
SKY’s commitment to replace channels that do not work for our subscribers we made the decision to not to renew the contract with UKTV”, said Dunbar.

In early 2002 SKY plans add to its channel line-up with the introduction of new entertainment channels.

As part of the channel reorganisation, Granada UKTV will make way for BBC World on SKY Digital’s “Start Up” basic programming tier.

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