This is a timeline of the history of Sky Television.
1970s and 1980s
1977
21 October – The World Administrative Radio Conference assigns each country five high-powered direct broadcast by satellite channels for domestic use.
1980
Plans for a pan-European satellite television station are put together by Brian Haynes, back by backed by Guinness Mahon and Barclays Merchant Bank and in November Mr Haynes sets up Satellite Television Ltd. (SATV)
1981
21 October – SATV begins test transmissions on the Orbital Test Satellite after the European Space Agency allowed the company to test the satellite for the use of commercial television, with an hour of light entertainment in English each night. The low-powered satellite forces it to broadcast to cable systems rather than directly to individual satellite dishes.
1982
February – The BBC is awarded two of the five channels DBS satellite channels. 26 April – Satellite Television launches as a pan-European service. The channel was often referred to on-screen as Super Station Europe. However the channel is initially only available in some European countries, with Norway and Finland being the first two countries to permit the new service's transmission via cable, followed by Malta, Switzerland and West Germany.
1983
27 June – News International becomes the majority shareholder of Satellite Television. 16 October – Satellite Television begins broadcasting in the UK. Autumn – Shortly after the Home Secretary announced that the three remaining satellite channels would be given to the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) to allow the private sector to compete against the BBC, starts talking with the IBA about a joint project to help cover the cost. The Government subsequently gives permission and a consortium emerges consisting of the BBC, Granada, Anglia, Virgin, Thorn EMI, Pearson Longman and Consolidated Satellite Broadcasting. The BBC holds a 50% stake in the consortium.
1984
16 January – Satellite Television is renamed Sky Channel. 25 June – The consortium wanting to launch satellite television announces that the original launch date of 1986 will be delayed until 1989.
1985
15 June – The consortium which has been planning to launch satellite television in the UK collapses on costs grounds.
1986
2 April – The IBA invites bids from the private sector to operate a commercial service on three of the five DBS channels allocated to the UK in 1977 for satellite broadcasting. 11 December – The IBA announces that BSB has been awarded a fifteen-year franchise to operate the satellite television service.
1987
No events.
1988
8 June – Having failed to become part of the BSB consortium, Rupert Murdoch announces plans to launch a four-channel service on the soon to be launched Astra satellite. 11 December – The satellite on which Sky Television will broadcast, Astra 1A, is successfully launched by communications satellite company SES.
1989
5 February – Sky Television launches at 6.00pm. The channel line-up consists of Sky Channel, Sky News, Sky Movies and Eurosport. 3 June – Sky Television and The Walt Disney Company come to an arrangement which allows to broadcast movies for a five-year period, this agreement comes a few weeks after plans to create a full-time channel were scrapped, although a Disney-branded version eventually launched on 1 October 1995. June – BSB is awarded the other two DBS channel slots, meaning that the service will launch with five channels. These two channels had originally been allocated to the BBC but were handed over for commercial use when the BBC dropped its plans to use the two channels on cost grounds. 31 July – Sky Channel becomes a UK and Ireland-only service and is renamed Sky One although for a short time after the relaunch, some of Sky Channel's former pan-European programming is broadcast in the hours before Eurosport's startup, and the programme block is branded as Sky Europe.