Can Virgin1 Ever Overtake Sky1 in the Battle of the Flagship Channels?

Charles — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:41:51 +0000

Launched in April 1982 under the name The Satellite Channel (how many people remember that?), Sky1 is actually the UK’s 4th oldest TV channel, as Channel 4 didn’t launch until November 1982. It’s been through several name changes since and according to February 2009 figures has a 1.4% audience share. Virgin1 is a positive newcomer in comparison – having launched in October 2007 it commands 0.6% of the UK TV audience (as of March 2009), and so while Virgin TV it has a long way to go to beat its Sky rival you could argue it’s well on the way.
One key factor in Sky1’s popularity is getting the ’scoop’ – from the very early days Sky has always shown The Simpsons, at times with exclusive UK rights, and was the first UK channel to show two of the other most popular shows of recent years, ER and Friends. Without one of these star performers to create a buzz Virgin1 may always lag behind – so far the best examples you could give would be The X Files, Home Improvement and certain series of Star Trek.
One difficult nut to crack for Virgin Media, and to some extent Sky, is replacing BBC1 or ITV as a UK viewer’s default channel – a bit like having a homepage set in your browser, the UK public have the Beeb and ITV so embedded in their psyche as the main destination for the news or just “to see what’s on” that to get them to regard Virgin1 in the same way could take some time. It remains to be seen between now and 2012 whether the digital switchover and convergence of TV and web will have any effect on this, but in the meantime the advice to Virgin Media TV would be to find the next Simpsons and grab it with both hands.

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Can Virgin1 Ever Overtake Sky1 in the Battle of the Flagship Channels?