From left: Paul Murray, Peta Credlin, David Speers and Kieran Gilbert with their Silver Logie for the Most Outstanding News Coverage during the 2017 Logie Awards at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Sunday, April 23, 2017. Tracey Nearmy/Press Association. All rights reserved.For much of the 1980s, Rupert Murdoch steadily lost money on his Sky TV venture, initially offered as a pan-European service to owners of large satellite dishes. He assumed there was a pan-European advertising market: he was wrong.
When it became technically possible, in 1988, to deliver multiple channels to medium-sized dishes in the UK, Murdoch doubled down on his investment, even though he would now face a government-sponsored rival, British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB), using an even smaller “squarial” dish. At one point, in 1990, Murdoch’s master company, News Corporation, came close to breaching its banking covenants, as the losses at Sky mounted. It was a career-defining gamble.
As both satellite companies splurged cash in competing for ruinously expensive Hollywood studio deals, they stared bankruptcy in the face; and they eventually collapsed into each other’s arms, with control of the newly-formed BSkyB, although owned equally by the rivals, ceded to Murdoch. The combined business was losing £10 million a week.
