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New Horizons
The
launch of Sky Television in 1989 and British Satellite Broadcasting the
following year opened up a new market for imports. With negligible audiences
and minuscule programming budgets, neither side was able to offer up a
schedule based around original productions, so repeats and imports would
inevitably form a large part of the schedules.
Of the
two networks' entertainment channels, BSB's Galaxy had the stronger line-up,
and this also extended to imports as well. Acclaimed contemporary series such
as ‘China Beach’ or ‘Murphy Brown’ were scheduled alongside classics such as
‘The Outer Limits’. Of course not everything was up to those standards, with
the infamous ‘Heil Honey, I'm Home’ also part of the channel's schedule.
Sky
One on the other hand was largely reliant on older series, although the launch
of the Fox network in the States would eventually reap large dividends for the
channel.
Perhaps the turning point for the channel came on 2 September 1990 when ‘The
Simpsons’ first aired in the UK. First broadcast in the US in December 1989,
the series has become synonymous with Sky and even today forms a major part of
Sky One's schedule with over a dozen episodes shown during most weeks.
Animated
scheduling
Whilst
regarded as a primetime series in the States, ‘The Simpsons’ is sadly pitched
more towards children in the UK. This may be because Sky (and other UK
broadcasters) automatically regard an animated series as being primarily for
children or simply an unfortunate result of its early evening scheduling.
Of
course this scheduling may have been because Sky regarded it as being of more
interest to younger viewers or simply because it identified a weak-link in the
terrestrial channels' scheduling between 6-7pm on a Sunday. With religious
programming still being shown on BBC-1 and ITV, here was an opportunity that
Sky One could exploit. Since relatively few of its viewers would be watching
Songs of Praise or Highway, why not give them something that they would be
interested in watching?
The
fact that ‘The Simpsons’ was given a repeat at 8.30pm on Thursdays in the
early days perhaps lends support to this argument but, either way, the fact
that the series was given an early evening slot has affected the way the
series is perceived in the UK. Not only was Bart often promoted as the 'star'
of the show instead of Homer, but many episodes are cut when shown in the UK.
When the BBC first acquired the series it seemed to believe that this was the
show to recapture the Saturday evening audience of both adults and children
that had been lost with the decline of Doctor Who, scheduling that saw the
series quickly pulled.
BBC mistakes
Subsequent BBC transmissions have included a short run on Saturday mornings
(which the BBC admits was a mistake) before it was given an early evening slot
on BBC-2, which of course meant it would still have to be cut. It's unlikely
that, having spent a small fortune to acquire the series, Channel 4 will break
with this tradition even though the series would probably do at least as well
at say 8pm or 8.30pm - as far as UK broadcasters are convinced The Simpsons is
a series that is best targeted at younger viewers.
The
Sky/BSB "merger" in November 1990 saw Galaxy and Sky One supposedly teaming up
to give viewers the "best of both worlds." In reality this meant that Galaxy's
BBC repeats were pulled with immediate effect, so that viewers left wondering
what happened in the last three episodes of ‘Doctor Who: The Daleks’ would
have to buy the BBC video and anyone watching ‘Jupiter Moon’ would have to
wait until the series reran on the Sci-Fi Channel to those episodes which
Galaxy never got round to showing.
Imports would therefore form the bulk of Sky One's schedule, but at least the
merger meant a general rise in quality. ‘The Simpsons’ were still there, of
course, but they were now joined by other series, many of which came from
Galaxy such as the Ferris Bueller clone ‘Parker Lewis Can't Lose’ and
‘Designing Women’, as well as the aforementioned ‘China Beach’ and ‘Murphy
Brown’. The Fox network provided ‘Cops’, which was a Sky One Saturday night
staple for years, while Sunday and Monday nights would usually be given over
to imported mini-series such as ‘Fatal Vision’ that had already been seen on
one of the terrestrial channels. These might have been ancient, but at least
they filled up the primetime schedule for at least two nights every week.
Perhaps the two next important imports were ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’
and ‘The X Files’. The original ‘Star Trek’ had first aired on BBC-1 in the
summer of 1969 and was a regular in the schedules for years, cropping up every
year until 1981 and then from 1984 to 1986. ‘The Next Generation’, which had
debuted in the US as a syndicated series in September 1987 had finally arrived
on BBC-2 three years later.
However, after three seasons Sky One acquired first run rights and set the
trend for all subsequent Star Trek series, which would all appear first on Sky
One (although some two-part Next Generation would be shown on Sky Movies
instead) before crossing over to terrestrial television. Subsequently Sky One
would repeat the trick of acquiring later seasons of programmes already
established by other broadcasters with ‘Lois & Clark’ and most successfully of
all, ‘Friends’.
A market for
Trekkers
Video
releases of ‘Star Trek’ had already demonstrated that there was a market
prepared to watch the series and now sci-fi fans joined sports and movie fans
as part of Sky's core audience. Additionally, the sheer number of ‘Star Trek’
episodes also allowed Sky to strip the series' repeat runs across the weekday
schedules - usually at 5pm with an 11pm repeat - for weeks at a time.
But if
‘The Next Generation’ was a successful series - albeit one pigeon-holed as
being for sci-fi anoraks – ‘The X Files’ was a phenomenon, both in terms of
audience size and press coverage.
First
shown by Fox on 10 September 1993, the series arrived on Sky One four months
later, an early example of Sky One picking up series from the current US
television season (which runs from September/October through to May) and
running them from the following January.
‘The X
Files’ was a massive success for both Fox and Sky, generating a huge amount of
column inches and making stars out of leads David Duchovny and Gillian
Anderson, which the FHM edition featuring Anderson rapidly becoming a
collectors' item as the series popularity soared.
When
the series transferred to terrestrial television it was on BBC-2, and like Sky
One, the channel showed episodes in the correct order. However, as the series'
ratings rose, BBC-1 wanted this audience for itself and towards the end of its
second season, the programme swapped channels, and the main channel showed
that it was more than happy to start shuffling the episode order.
X marks the
mistake
The
first BBC-1 episode should have been episode 18 of the season, but this was
swapped with episode 20. This may have simply been because the BBC believed it
was a more suitable introductory episode for BBC-1 audience but it was still
an early indication that BBC-1 was more interested in the size of the audience
that the programme itself.
This
trend would reach a sorry conclusion a couple of seasons later when the BBC
appeared to select which episodes it could show with either no or minimal cuts
and these were duly shown. The BBC then appeared to go back to the start of
the season, select those episodes that required slightly more cuts and show
these in a later slot.
By the
time all the episodes were shown, the BBC had looped back to the start at
least four times and the order in which the episodes were shown in couldn't
have been any more random if the BBC had taken all the cans of film and simply
thrown them up in the air. Even viewers who weren't aware of the original
episode order would have known something was amiss when Scully's dog returned
from the dead - even ‘The X Files’ wasn't into reincarnated pets.
Subsequent seasons never seemed to continue the audience momentum that the
series had in its early BBC-2 days. Of course, the increased audience on Sky
One would have pulled some viewers away, but this shouldn't have accounted for
more than, say, half a million viewers. Arguably some viewers may have watched
it because it was 'trendy' and coupled with the drop in quality in later
seasons it's unsurprisingly that many of these drifted away. However, it's
quite possible that BBC-1's poor treatment of the show (episodes shown out of
order and a timeslot later than the 9pm or 9.45pm that it enjoyed on BBC-2)
helped accelerate this decline. Many of those still watching the series were
probably relieved when the declining audience meant that the series was moved
back to BBC Two for the last couple of seasons because at least the series
would probably get improved treatment from the minority channel.
Foxing Sky
The
Fox network in the States has always provided Sky One with a large proportion
of its imports, many of which were short-lived (unsurprising given the
casualty rate on US television) but the likes of ‘Cops’, ‘The Simpsons’ and
‘The X Files’ lasted for years. However, by the end of the 1990s, Sky One had
another source of programming as UPN and The WB launched networks deliberately
targeted at younger audiences than the main US networks.
Many
series on these channels, particularly those on The WB, would eventually find
homes in the Sky One schedule. One of these would go onto to become one of Sky
One's highest rated programmes, as well as spawning a successful spin-off. Yet
when it was first shown on Sky One it was a ratings failure that was pulled
because its audience was too low even for Sky. Yet whilst ‘The Simpsons’ and
‘The X Files’ had built up a decent satellite audience before transferring to
terrestrial television, it took a terrestrial channel to turn ‘Buffy the
Vampire Slayer’ into a success on Sky One.
Carl Ellis
Text ©
Carl Ellis | Compilation © Transdiffusion Broadcasting System
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