Sky TV: 20 years in pictures

Rupert Murdoch launched his 'revolution in choice', satellite broadcaster Sky Television, at 6pm on Sunday, 5 February, 1989. Penny Smith - pre-GMTV - and Alastair Yates were the first Sky News presenters seen on air. The other three launch services were Sky Channel – soon to become Sky One - Sky Movies and Eurosport Photograph: Sky

1988: Rupert Murdoch and Alan Sugar announcing the signing of a 10-year Astra satellite lease. Sugar's Amstrad was to supply satellite dishes and set top boxes. Sky's rival BSB, with backers including Granada TV and Pearson, had won the official UK satellite broadcasting licence way back in 1986. But Murdoch got on air first by using Luxembourg-based SES Astra's satellites to bypass British TV regulators Photograph: PA/PA

Andrew Neil, who oversaw Sky TV's launch as executive chairman, and Rupert Murdoch in 1989. At launch around 600,000 homes in the UK and Ireland could receive at least one of Sky's four channels, mainly via cable TV - only about 10,000 satellite dishes were installed. Sky's dish and set top box cost £199, with a further £40-£60 installation fee Photograph: Rex Features/Rex Features

Sky TV's headquarters in February 1989, when the satellite broadcaster launched with about 400 staff. Sky's first customer management centre opened in the same year in Livingston, Scotland. Fittingly for an outfit that in its early years saw itself as a plucky outsider taking on the complacent British broadcasting establishment, Sky was – and still is – based on an industrial estate in Isleworth, west London, well away from the central London HQs of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 Photograph: PR

Sky News launch team, 1989, from left: Tony Blackburn, Sale of the Century host Peter Marshall, Derek Jameson, Andrew Neil, Rupert Murdoch, Alastair Yates, Kay Burley and Bob Friend. Murdoch was quoted in the Guardian the week before launch saying that Sky would be more dependent on advertising than subscription revenue – how times change Photograph: Sky

Rupert Murdoch and Andrew Neil launching Sky Television in February 1989. At launch around 600,000 homes in the UK and Ireland could receive at least one of Sky's four channels, mainly via cable TV - only about 10,000 satellite dishes were installed. Neil returned to editing the Sunday Times in January 1990 to see off the about-to-launch Independent on Sunday. Murdoch then took personal control of Sky TV at a time losses were running at £10m a month, with the launch of rival satellite broadcaster BSB imminent Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA

The England cricket team celebrating in the dressing room after their victory in the first test against West Indies in Jamaica, February 1990. The match marked Sky's first live coverage of England overseas Tests Photograph: Getty Images/Getty Images

29 April, 1990: Anthony Simonds-Gooding, left, and John Gau toasting the much delayed launch of BSB's five channel offering via its 'squarial' dishes. After an expensive and increasingly fractious six-month battle for subscribers in the midst of a recession, Sky and BSB cut their losses – at the time reported to be a combined £1.25bn - and merged on 2 November 1990, creating BSkyB Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA

November 1990: Sam Chisholm, recently arrived at Sky from Australia's Nine Network with a fearsome hatchet-man reputation, took the helm at BSkyB following the merger with BSB. Sky executives took most of the senior jobs at the newly merged company, which was based at Isleworth. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp – struggling at the time to service a £4bn debt - became the largest shareholder. By the time Mark Booth took over as chief executive from Chisholm at the end of 1997, BSkyB was a top 20 FTSE company with £315m annual profit Photograph: Adam Butler/PA

Early Sky TV publicity shot with Bart Simpson and friends, from left, Scott Chisholm, Sue Barker, Richard Keys, Alison Holloway and Andy Gray. The Simpsons launched on Sky1 – or Sky One, as it was back then – in 1990 and remains a ratings banker nearly 20 years later. Sky One was born on July 30, 1989, when Sky Channel was rebranded. Also in 1990 Sky Movies relaunched as the first UK encrypted channel, with subscribers paying a monthly for a viewing card to watch the service Photograph: PR

Vic Wakeling joined Sky as head of football in 1991 and the following year was part of the management team, along with Rupert Murdoch and Sam Chisholm, that masterminded the deal that decisively turned the company's fortunes around and ensured its lasting success – the first Premier League live TV rights contract. BSkyB landed the Premier League deal on 18 May, 1992, stunning Greg Dyke and the ITV companies in a joint bid with the BBC – which took highlights for Match of the Day – worth £304m over five years. Wakeling is still at Sky, becoming head of sport in 1994 and managing director of Sky Sports four years later. He has been involved in four subsequent successful Premier League rights negotiations – the most recent keeping live coverage of England's top football clubs on Sky until 2013 Photograph: Martin Godwin/Freelance

16 August, 1992: Sky's first live Premier League coverage, of Nottingham Forest's 1-0 win over Liverpool, with Teddy Sheringham scoring the decisive goal. Showing 60 live games a year, Sky went onto revolutionise UK sports broadcasting with the money and resources it invested in Premier League coverage. Financially, BSkyB was also turning the corner by 1992, moving into operating profit for the first time in March that year. By August, Sky dishes were in 3.3 million homes and it had 1.6 million subscribers to its sport and movie channels Photograph: Sky

1993: Sky News wins the first of 21 Royal Television Society awards, for its coverage of the Bishopsgate bomb and Ostend tanker fire. In the same year, Sky launched its first package of basic subscription channels, offering 14 services for a monthly fee including Sky One, Discovery, UK Gold and Nickelodeon Photograph: Sky

Sky Sports featured golf from the outset and in 1995 covered the Ryder Cup live for the first time – one of several sports rights contracts it won from the BBC – with Europe beating the US team at Oak Hill Country Club, New York. Also in 1995, BSkyB entered the FTSE 100 after floating 17% of the company on the London and New York stock exchanges the previous year. Subscribers topped 5 million in 1995 Photograph: Robert Sullivan/AFP/Getty Images

16 March 1996: 660,000 viewers signed up to Sky for the UK's first pay-per-view TV event, the Frank Bruno v Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas. BSkyB's annual revenue hit £1bn for the first time in the year to the end of June 1996, with operating profit at £257m. The same year, Sky subscriber numbers hit 6 million Photograph: Al Bello/Getty Images

29 April 1996: Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan launches into his famous 'I'd love it if we beat them, love it!' rant against Alex Ferguson in a live post-match interview with Andy Gray and Richard Keys on Sky Sports Photograph: Sky

The late Bob Friend, one of the original Sky News presenting team, reached a wider audience in 1996 with newreader cameos in two of that year's blockbusters – Mission Impossible and Independence Day. Friend died in October last year, aged 70. He joined Sky in 1989 from the BBC and retired in 2003 Photograph: BSkyB

In 1996 Sky landed the pay-TV rights to hit US imports ER and Friends, meaning Sky One viewers got to see the shows first in the UK, before they were broadcast on Channel 4. Along with The Simpsons, ER and Friends were regularly among the top rating non-sports shows on multichannel TV in the late 1990s. Channel 4 won back the pay-TV rights for the two shows for the launch of the its digital service E4 in early 2001 Photograph: Getty Images/Getty Images

In March 1996 England's premier Rugby League club competition was relaunched as Super League after an exclusive live rights deal with Sky. The sport moved from a winter to a summer season after more than 100 years. This 1999 publicity shot shows the 14 Super League club captains that season Photograph: BSkyB

Sky News covers the funeral of Princess Diana on Saturday 6 September, 1997. The previous Sunday morning, 31 August, Sky News presenter Kay Burley was hauled out of bed at 3.30am to anchor breaking news coverage of Diana and Dodi Fayed's car crash in Paris with Martin Stanford. Just after 5am, shortly after getting to the studio, Burley read out the Press Association story confirming that Diana was dead Photograph: BSkyB

The Electronic Programme Guide – EPG – for Sky Digital, the UK's first digital TV service. Sky Digital went live on 1 October 1998, accompanied by a lavish launch party at Battersea Power Station that was nearly wrecked by a rain storm. The digital satellite TV service soon faced competition from digital terrrestrial pretender On Digital, backed by ITV companies Granada and Carlton. Like another Granada-backed pay-TV venture, BSB, On Digital – later rebranded ITV Digital – was based at Marco Polo House, in the shadow of Battersea Power Station. Also like BSB, it was ruthlessly seen off by Sky, collapsing ignominiously in March 2002 – and taking some £800m of Granada and Carlton investment with it Photograph: BSkyB

Kirsty Gallacher on Sky Sports News, which launched in 1998. Sky Digital allowed Sky to offer viewers hundreds of channels and more interactivity, prompting an explosion in new service launches, including the stats-heavy rolling sports news offering. Investment in the new technology and persuading customers to switch from Sky's analogue satellite TV service – along with the cost of competing with On Digital - pushed the company back into operating loss between 1999 and 2002, although annual revenue almost doubled in that period to £2.8bn Photograph: Sky

Sky One began commissioning more home grown UK shows from the late 90s, with two of the most successful early examples being football drama Dream Team and Ibiza Uncovered, a docu-soap following young Britons behaving badly abroad, both launched in 1997. Dream Team followed the on- and off-field dramas of the fictional Harchester United and ran for 10 years Photograph: Kerry Ghais/Sky

Kay Burley was on air once again on Sky News on Tuesday 11 September, 2001, just before 2pm, London time, trying to make sense of reports that a light plane had hit the World Trade Centre, when live pictures from New York showed the second airliner flying into the towers Photograph: Sky

In November 2003 Rupert Murdoch saw off a potential shareholder revolt to install his son James as BSkyB chief executive, replacing Tony Ball. The following August, Sky's share price plunged nearly 20% - despite a £600m annual profit – the day James unveiled his plan to boost marketing spend and Sky One's programme budget to drive subscriber growth. In 2006 he led Sky's aggressive move into broadband and in November that year came the audacious and controversial £940m swoop for a 17.9% stake in ITV, thwarting an NTL takeover bid. James showed his abrasive side again in March 2007, when a row over carriage deals with Virgin Media led to channels including Sky News and Sky One being taken off cable TV for 18 months Photograph: Andrew Parsons/PA

Kiefer Sutherland as anti-terrorism agent Jack Bauer in series three of 24 – the first shown on Sky One, from February 2004. Sky picked up the 24 rights after the BBC, which broadcast the first two series, failed to reach a deal with US producer Fox. Sky One subsequently picked up other US imports Lost, previously broadcast by Channel 4, and Prison Break, from Channel Five Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Rex Features

Sky News won an international Emmy for its coverage of the 7 July, 2005 bombings in London Photograph: Sky

James Murdoch was promoted to the post of chairman and chief executive of News Corporation in Europe and Asia in December 2007, overseeing BSkyB and News International, a move that marked him as heir apparent to his father. James also replaced Rupert as BSkyB chairman. BSkyB chief financial officer Jeremy Darroch was promoted to chief executive, inheriting a company with 8.8 million pay-TV customers and 1.12 million broadband subscribers Photograph: Martin Argles/Guardian

Ross Kemp: Return to Afghanistan launched on the rebranded Sky1 in late January 2009. Other Sky1 homegrown shows include the Gladiators revival and a series of Terry Pratchett drama adaptations starring David Jason. By the end of 2008, Sky had 9.24 million subscribers in total, including 1.955 million broadband customers and 1.5 million paying for its Sky Talk phone service. Operating profit for the six months to the end of 2008 was £388m, on revenue of £2.6bn. In January 2009 Sky announced ambitious plans to add 1,000 staff to its 15,000 workforce and open a new call centre in Leeds to boost the 779,000 subscribers to its high-definition TV service Photograph: Sky