The Sky-Fi Music Show

Sky Channel's earliest homegrown programme

It always amazes me that, in Britain in the mid-1980s, you weren’t necessarily stuck with just BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 as your viewing options. Sure, the vast majority of the country was stuck with this limited choice, but others were slightly more lucky. You see, in more progressive areas, there were several other channels available through cable television. And these brought a whole new world of programming into viewers’ homes.

Sky Channel, which launched in January 1984, was one of the most prominent channels to emerge during cable television’s boom period in the mid-1980s. Despite the ambitious mid-1960s launch of Pay-TV, cable television channels had, historically, been community affairs running on shoestring budgets and goodwill. However, it was now time for professional broadcasters to throw their hats into the ring and give British viewers more variety.

Variety, though, perhaps wasn’t the best word to describe the early days of Sky Channel. Built mostly on a schedule of American re-runs such as Starsky and Hutch and Fantasy Island, the channel struggled to live up to its vision of being an exclusive and exciting new option. Nonetheless, there was some original British content being produced by Sky Channel, and the very first programme to be made under the Sky banner was The Sky-Fi Music Show.