Channel 4 began broadcasting in 1982 as the fourth publicly owned but commercially funded television channel in the UK. It was established to provide more diverse programming beyond the BBC and ITV. Channel 4 now offers several additional digital channels and internet streaming services. Sky launched in 1989 as the UK's first major satellite TV provider and has grown to offer hundreds of channels and internet services, with over 12 million subscribers as of 2008. UKTV is a joint venture between BBC Worldwide and Virgin Media that operates several digital channels showing archive BBC programming, including comedy-focused Dave channel launched in 2007.

1. Channel 4

2. It began working on 2nd November 1982. It is commercially self funded, however it is ultimately publicly owned. Now owned by the Channel Four Television Corporation. It was originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

3. The channel was established to provide a fourth television service to the UK that would break the duopoly of the Licence Fee-funded BBC's two established services and the single commercial broadcasting network, ITV. Channel 4 enjoys almost universal coverage in the UK and some neighbouring countries and a significant audience share, despite having seen new competition with the growth of cable, satellite and digital services.

4. Since being established Channel four has had to fulfill the Communications act:

5. "The public service remit for Channel 4 is the provision of a broad range of high quality and diverse programming which, in particular: * demonstrates innovation, experiment and creativity in the form and content of programmes; * appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society; * makes a significant contribution to meeting the need for the licensed public service channels to include programmes of an educational nature and other programmes of educative value; and * exhibits a distinctive character.”

6. Before Channel 4 and S4C, Britain had three terrestrial television services: BBC1, BBC2, and ITV. The Broadcasting Act 1980 began the process of adding a fourth, and Channel 4, along with its Welsh counterpart, was formally created by an Act of Parliament in 1982. After some months of test broadcasts, it began scheduled transmissions on 2 November 1982.

7. During the station's formative years, funding came from the ITV companies in return for their right to sell advertisements in their region on the fourth channel. Nowadays it pays for itself in much the same way as most privately run commercial stations through the sale of on-air advertising, programme sponsorship, and the sale of any programme content and merchandising rights it owns.

8. Other Channel Four services: Film4 E4 More4 4Music Channel4 HD

9. 4OD Four On Demand is an internet service which enables computer users to watch programmes on the 4OD website, meaning you never need to miss your favourite programmes.

10. British Sky Broadcasting The largest pay TV provider

11. The Astra satellite network began with the launch of Astra 1A in 1989. With the launch of more Astra satellites from 1991 onward BSkyB was able to begin expanding its services. Sky does not own any of the satellites it has used since withdrawing service from the Marcopolo craft; the Astra satellites are owned and operated by SES Astra. Sky has shared its orbital position with other pay-TV systems in the past.

12. By 1990 both Rupert Murdoch's Sky Television and the BSB alliance were beginning to struggle with the burden of massive losses which led to a 50:50 financial merger in November 1990. The new company was called British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) but marketed as Sky, Marco Polo House was sold, BSB's channels were largely scrapped in favour of Sky's and the Marcopolo satellites were run down and eventually sold in favour of the Astra system. The merger may have saved Sky financially; Sky had very few major advertisers to begin with. Acquiring BSB's healthier advertising contracts and equipment apparently solved the company's problems.

13. Move to digital The launch of the Astra 2A satellite at a new orbital position, 28.2° east, in 1998 (subsequently followed by more Astra satellites as well as Eutelsat's Eurobird 1 at 28.5°E), enabled the company to launch a new all-digital service, Sky Digital, with the potential to carry hundreds of television and radio channels.

14. More than a third (about 39%) owned by News Corp. As of 30 September 2008 it had 9,067,000 direct to home customers in the UK and Ireland. As of February 2007, it also had 3,294,000 indirect customers through the cable operator Virgin Media & through IPTV operator TalkTalk TV in the UK, and a further 604,000 indirect cable customers on UPC Ireland in Ireland.

15. Direct subsidiaries * British Sky Broadcasting Ltd Operating company for the Sky pay-television service. * Sky Television Ltd The original Sky Television plc, now a holding company * Sports Internet Group Ltd Sports content and online betting services.

16. * British Interactive Broadcasting Holdings Ltd Interactive television services, formerly an alliance of BSkyB, BT Group, HSBC and Matsushita. * Easynet Ltd Network infrastructure for Sky Broadband, Easynet connect, UK Online, and third party corporate customers. * Mykindaplace.com Being both an agency and a media owner, run many successful sites.

17. * Aura Play Ltd Another Media Sales Agency, sells advertising across a number of websites in the music and entertainment sector. * Sky Ireland Operating company for Sky pay-television service in the Republic of Ireland. * Aura Sports Ltd Media Sales Agency, sells advertising on the majority of premiership football club websites, as well as other major sports.

18. Xbox 360 On 29 May 2009 it was confirmed that Sky Player would be made available via Microsoft's Xbox 360 games console. Included is live streaming of various television channels, on-demand movies and live sports programming. This was a worldwide first for Microsoft, and only available in the UK and Ireland.

19. Sky.com “Your home for the latest news, sports and entertainment”

20. Sky.com offers viewers news from across the world, sport, showbiz, movies, music, blogs, games, environmental news, TV, games, learning, shopping, real life stories and travel.

21. Sky has announced that the number of customers choosing Sky+HD, the UK’s only high definition (HD) service currently capable of broadcasting 3D services, has increased to 1.313 million following record growth. Sky+HD and 3D

22. Customers have responded in record numbers to Sky’s high quality and great value HD service. Sky has more than doubled the number of HD customers in the last year alone with over 90 customers* an hour joining Sky+HD.

23. In the next step in the Sky+HD journey, Sky today announced that it will launch the UK’s first 3D channel next year. The channel will offer a broad selection of the best available 3D programming, which is expected to include movies, entertainment and sport. The service will be broadcast across Sky’s existing HD infrastructure and be available via the current generation of Sky+HD set-top boxes. To watch 3D, customers will also require a new '3D Ready' TV, which are expected to be on sale in the UK next year.

24. This commitment follows extensive research and development activity into 3D, which included Sky becoming the first TV company in Europe to broadcast a live event in 3D TV. On 2nd April 2009 Sky successfully broadcast a performance by Keane live from Abbey Road Studios via the company’s satellite network to a Sky+HD set-top box and domestic 3D Ready TV.

25. Last year Sky said: “Next year we will make our HD boxes work even harder for customers by launching Europe’s first 3D TV channel, as well as introducing a comprehensive video-on-demand service to complement Sky+ and the current Sky Anytime service. 3D is a genuinely ‘seeing is believing’ experience, making TV come to life as never before. Just like the launch of digital, Sky+ and HD, this is latest step in our commitment to innovating for customers.”

26. UKTV

27. UKTV is a digital cable and satellite television network, formed through a joint venture between BBC Worldwide, a commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Virgin Media Television. It is one of the United Kingdom's largest television companies. Most programmes on UKTV's channels are repeat broadcasts of BBC productions

28. UKTV started as a single channel, UK Gold, which channel launched on 1 November 1992 as a joint venture between Thames Television and the BBC to show reruns of their 'classic' archive programming. UK Gold's success and the coming need to fill digital television multiplexes, led to the creation of UKTV which operates several channels showing different types of archive programming. These included UK Arena, UK Style, UK Drama, UK Play, UK Horizons and UK History, as well as the time-shifted UK Gold+1, and UK Gold Classics - soon renamed to UK Gold 2.

29. In September 2007, UKTV announced that they would relaunch and rename UKTV G2 to Dave on 15 October. UKTV said the name of the channel was chosen because "Everybody knows a bloke called Dave". The rebrand included the channel being available free-to-air on digital terrestrial platform, Freeview, replacing UKTV Bright Ideas which only averaged 0.1% of the audience share

30. The output of the channel is mainly comedy from the BBC with some shows produced inhouse. A fair amount is similar to the comedy output of UK Play/Play UK before that channel's closure.

31. Some shows available on Dave include Mock the Week, Top Gear, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Red Dwarf, Bottom, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, QI, Have I Got News for You, The Catherine Tate Show, "World Rally", Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Little Britain.

32. Within just one month of its launch, Dave had become the tenth largest television channel in the UK. The broadcaster puts daily averages at around 3 million viewers[citation needed], although much of the growth may be attributed to its presence on Freeview, nonetheless, it is performing significantly better in pay TV homes than UKTV G2 ever did.

33. Dave's positive reception is proven by an attraction of 4 million viewers throughout 18 November 2007 for its coverage of "Car of the Year", pushing it to second place in multichannel behind ITV2. The shows with the highest ratings are Mock the Week (over 420,000 viewers), QI (over 400,000), Top Gear (350,000) and Dragons' Den (about 300,000). The first episode of Red Dwarf: Back to Earth attracted 2,060,000 viewers. The highest rating original commission before this had been Red Bull X-Fighters (about 185,000).

34. www.UKTV.co.uk A very well designed website which is very easy to access information.