Fiktiv UK - Sky Group

Sky Group Limited is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate owned by News Corp and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Sky is Europe's largest media company and pay-TV broadcaster by revenue (as of 2018), with 23 million subscribers and more than 31,000 employees as of 2019. The company is primarily involved in satellite television, producing and broadcasting.

The company was formed in November 1980 as Satellite Television Ltd. (SATV), a consortium set up by Brian Haynes, a former journalist employed at Thames Television. Satellite Television (also known as Super Station Europe on screen) began regular transmissions on 26 April 1982, becoming Europe's first ever cable and satellite channel, originally broadcasting from OTS aimed to cable operators all over Europe. Norway and Finland were the first two countries to permit the new service's transmission via cable, followed by Malta and Switzerland, and then West Germany. Originally it did not have a UK broadcasting licence and consequently was in a similar legal situation to the pirate radio stations of the 1960s and 1970s; however, reception of the OTS satellite in the UK required a satellite dish approximately 10 feet (3 meters) wide, and it was believed that there were fewer than 50 privately owned installations in the UK that would permit direct-to-home (DTH) reception of the service.

As from 10 March 1983, plans were afoot to start broadcasting to the UK, with the aim of proving that there was a potential audience with the service being technically possible, and that the service could make a profit. Nonetheless, the station struggled financially because of a limited audience. This was due to the relatively-weak signal of OTS that made direct-to-home reception of the service extremely difficult; the service therefore had to rely on cable audiences, and was restricted to countries where receiving the channel via cable was very legal. The service also had to covering the high costs of satellite transmission, and also on 25 March, Rupert Murdoch had shown interest in the project and he held talks with SATV's owners about buying a substantial equity stake in the company. On 27 June 1983, the shareholders of Satellite Television agreed a £5 million offer to give News International 65% of the company.

Eventually, Murdoch bought the remaining shares of the company, taking full control. During August, Murdoch outlined plans which saw the broadcasting hours extended to 5.50pm to 10.30pm each day, with a mix of music, sport, news, comedy and films. Plans were also afoot to start broadcasting from the new European communications satellite ECS-1 and additional cable operators, allowing it to increase its audience across Europe and gain access to British viewers. By 16 October 1983, the station finally started broadcasting to the United Kingdom.

On 16 January 1984, the channel was renamed Sky Channel. Rupert Murdoch and Jardin Owens put in new management, extended its broadcast hours and expanded its programming line-up to incorporate a mix of English-language sports and entertainment shows, These included new music programmes with Gary Davies, Linda de Mol, Pat Sharp, David "Kid" Jensen and Anthea Turner, such as Euro Top 40, and UK Top 50 Chart. The new management also adopted a more aggressive policy to reach an increasing number of cable households throughout Europe. Shortly after the channel's relaunch, the first cable system in the UK to incorporate it on a permanent basis was Swindon Cable. In the Republic of Ireland, Sky Channel started to become widely available among cable systems in around 1987.

Murdoch bid for the satellite broadcasting license on 11 December 1986 but lost out to British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) who announced plans to begin broadcasting in mid-1989 with three channels on satellite frequencies legally allotted to the UK by international agreement. Murdoch attempted to join the BSB consortium, but was rejected which spurred him on to set up his own satellite service.

On 8 June 1988, Murdoch announced at a press conference his plans to expand Sky's service to four channels, thus creating the Sky Television Network, Sky Channel alongside the other three channels would move to the Astra satellite system (on SES' RCA Astro-built satellite, Astra 1A, intended for direct-to-home reception), and the new network would centre its operations more specifically to the UK. (Sky had from its initial satellite moved to the ECS-F1 (Eutelsat I-F4) satellite).

By renting space on the Luxembourg-based Astra satellites, Murdoch circumvented British ownership laws, and using the existing PAL broadcast technology, Sky TV began broadcasting four channels of programming on 5 February 1989, including an upgraded version of the original Sky Channel, later renamed Sky One; Eurosport, a joint-venture between the European Broadcasting Union and News International; Sky Movies, (which became a subscription service in 1990); and Sky News, a 24-hour news channel.

On 12 May 2014, Sky Television confirmed that it was in talks with its largest shareholder, News Corp, about acquiring News Corp's 57.4% stake in Sky Deutschland and its 100% stake in Sky Italia. The enlarged company (dubbed "Sky Europe" in the media) will consolidate News Corp's European digital TV assets into one company. The £4.9 billion takeover deal was formally announced on 25 July, where Sky Television would acquire News Corp's stakes in Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia. Sky Television also made a required takeover offer to Sky Deutschland's minority shareholders, resulting in Sky Television acquiring 89.71% of Sky Deutschland's share capital. The acquisitions were completed on 13 November. Sky Television plc changed its name to Sky Group plc to reflect the European acquisitions, and the United Kingdom operations were renamed Sky UK Limited. Sky Group plc bought out the remaining minority shareholders in Sky Deutschland during 2015, using a squeeze-out procedure to obtain the remaining shares and delist Sky Deutschland on 15 September 2015.