Today’s TV: Friday 18 May 1990
from the NZ Listener
TV One
6.30am Massey University
Alles Gutes, episodes six to nine
7.30 (approx) Closedown
9.55 Teletext in Vision
10.10 Play School (Rpt, G)
10.35 The Shoe People (Rpt, G)
10.40 Make Music Fun (G)
10.50 The ChuckleHounds (Rpt, G)
10.55 Doctor Snuggles (Rpt, G)
11.00 Atlantic Realm (Part 3, final) (Rpt, G)
11.55 Te Karere Headlines
Noon One Network News
12.15 Film on One - Heidi (1952) (G)
2.00 Worlds Apart (G)
2.50 Earthwatch (G)
3.10 Knots Landing (PGR)
4.00 Designing Women (G)
4.30 227 (G)
4.50 Emmerdale Farm (G)
5.20 North and South Island Programmes
NORTH
5.20 Te Karere
5.30 M-A-S-H (Rpt, G)
SOUTH
5.20 Bugs Bunny (G)
5.35 Te Karere
5.45 The Mainland Touch (Christchurch) / The South Tonight (Dunedin)
6.00 One Network News
6.30 Holmes
7.00 Sale of the Century (G)
7.30 Coronation Street (G)
8.00 A Question of Sport (G)
8.30 Casualty (AO)
9.30 One World of Sport - Sports Week
10.00 One Network News
10.30 One World of Sport - Friday Night League
Winfield Cup 1990 - full delayed coverage of a round nine match (Brisbane Broncos v Cronulla Sharks)
12.30am Closedown
Channel 2
6.15am Teletext in Vision
6.30 The Yearling (G)
7.00 Breakfast News
7.05 The All New Popeye Show (Rpt, G)
7.30 Breakfast News
7.35 Flash Gordon (Rpt, G)
8.00 Breakfast News
8.05 The Smurfs (G)
8.30 Breakfast News
8.35 Maya the Bee (G)
9.00 Atom Ant (Final) (G)
9.20 Mike & Angelo (Final) (G)
9.40 Colour in the Creek (Final) (Rpt, G)
10.05 No Place Like Home (G)
10.40 Aerobics Oz Style (G)
11.05 Santa Barbara
Noon The Young and the Restless
1.00 Days of Our Lives
2.00 Webster (G)
2.25 After 2, including:
2.26 Play School (Rpt, G)
2.50 Hot Dog (G)
3.00 Puddle Lane (G)
3.15 Wowser (G)
3.45 Live!, including:
3.50 The Chipmunks (G)
4.20 RTR New Releases (G)
5.00 Batman (Rpt, G)
5.30 Blind Date (G)
6.00 Happy Days (Rpt, G)
6.30 Neighbours (Double episode) (G)
7.30 Richmond Hill (G)
8.30 Beyond 2000 (G)
9.30 Married… with Children (PGR)
10.00 Doctor Doctor (PGR)
10.35 Newsbreak
10.40 Unsolved Mysteries (AO)
11.40 Blue Thunder (AO)
12.45am Closedown
TV3
Noon The Oprah Winfrey Show (PGR)
1.00 The Power, the Passion (PGR)
1.30 Generations (PGR)
2.00 The Bold and the Beautiful (PGR)
2.30 Another World (PGR)
3.20 Thomas the Tank Engine (Rpt, G)
3.30 Mickey Mouse Club (G)
4.00 DuckTales (G)
4.30 Voltron (G)
5.00 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (G)
5.30 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Rpt, G)
6.00 Home and Away (G)
6.30 3 National News
7.00 Family Feud (G)
7.30 The Greatest American Hero (G)
8.30 Airwolf (AO)
9.30 The Main Event (Starting tonight)
10.30 Nightline
11.00 Late Movie - Saint Jack (1979) (AO)
1.00am Closedown
Sky News (CNN)
6.00am Newsday
7.00 CNN International Hour
8.00 Newsday
8.30 BBC News (6pm bulletin)
9.00 Newswatch
9.30 BBC News (9pm bulletin)
10.00 The World Today
11.00 Moneyline
11.30 Crossfire
Noon Prime News
1.00 Larry King Live
2.00 CNN Evening News
3.00 Moneyline
3.30 CNN Sports Tonight
4.00 Newsnight
5.00 Showbiz Today
5.30 Newsnight Update
6.30 Sports Latenight
7.00 News Overnight
7.30 CNN Newsroom
8.00 Larry King Overnight
9.00 Crossfire
9.30 Earlybird News
10.00 Daybreak
10.30 Business Morning
11.00 Daybreak
11.30 Business Day
12.00am Daybreak
1.00 CNN Morning News
2.00 World Day
3.00 Daywatch
4.00 Newshour
5.00 Sonya Live in LA (Continues to 6am)
Sky Sport
5.00pm The Opening Shot
A preview of what’s coming up on Sky Sport and highlights of the sporting week
6.00 Boxing
Top Rank Boxing - light heavyweights (Andrew Maynard v Mike Sedillo)
7.00 AMA Wrestling
8.00 Golf
The Southwestern Bell Classic
9.15 Rugby League
Includes live coverage of a round nine match (Brisbane Broncos v Cronulla Sharks) in the 1990 Winfield Cup season and highlights of the 1989/90 Rugby League Premiership final (Widnes v Bradford Northern)
12.00am Closedown
Sky Movies
Noon Ask Dr Ruth
12.30 Loving (1970)
2.00 SpaceCamp (1986)
4.00 Lovesick (1983)
6.00 Willow (1988)
8.05 The Man from Snowy River (1982)
10.00 Never Say Die (1988)
12.00am Closedown
Sky Network Television launches - “The Sky’s the limit”
“If you want it, here it is - come and get it!”
Sky Network Television, the pioneering subscription television service in New Zealand, began on Friday 18 May 1990. Subscribers equipped with VideoCrypt decoders could access a 24-hour news channel, and movie and sport channels each running daily from noon to midnight.
Despite the subscription model, all television viewers within the transmission area could still receive a ‘free-to-air’ daily news broadcasts and a free sports hour without needing a subscription. To access the free services you simply needed to tune your television set to a designated UHF channel and the Sky signal.
The free news broadcasts could be viewed on Mondays from 7-9am (CNN World Report), Tuesday to Saturday from 6-8am (Newsday and CNN International Hour) and Sunday from 6-8am (News Update, Health Week, Style with Elsa Klensch, On the Menu and Your Money), as per an article in the NZ Listener.
The free-to-air sport slot was allocated from 5-6pm each evening. During Sky’s launch week Friday’s screening (The Opening Shot) included a preview of what was coming up on Sky Sport in the following months while Saturday and Sunday featured live coverage of the first halves of rugby league matches from the 1990 Winfield Cup season.
The Sky signal initially reached the greater Auckland region, spanning from Pukekohe in the south to Orewa in the north, extending east to Beachlands and Whangaparaoa Peninsula, and bordered by the Waitakere Ranges in the west.
Viewers who successfully tuned into the Sky test pattern upon launch were likely to receive a clear signal, while those experiencing reception issues with TVNZ and TV3 (now Three) encountered similar difficulties with Sky’s signal. A tall UHF aerial could potentially resolve reception issues.
By July 1990, two months after the launch of Sky in Auckland, it was expanded to the Waikato region (Hamilton) and the Bay of Plenty region (Tauranga). In the initial years of Sky’s operation the coverage was planned to be extended gradually across the rest of the country, beginning with Rotorua, Wellington and Christchurch in 1991.
This was followed by the Hawke’s Bay, Manawatu, Otago and Southland regions in 1994. In 1995 Taupo, Whanganui and the Wairarapa were added to Sky’s coverage. The final regions to receive the Sky signal in 1996 were Taranaki, Whangarei and the Eastern Bay of Plenty (Whakatane).
Sky News
Sky News, a news channel supplied by a collaboration between CNN and the BBC, operated around the clock and commenced transmission at 6am on the morning of Friday 18 May 1990.
News junkies who subscribed to Sky welcomed the continuous stream of the most up-to-the-minute information but the channel retained traces of its domestic American origins, unlike the international CNN news channel that Sky initially sought to acquire.
As stated by Allan Martin, Sky’s executive director in charge of Sky News at the time, the international CNN channel transmitted from Atlanta, where CNN’s headquarters is currently based, to Europe and South America while it did not reach the Pacific satellite serving New Zealand. Hence, the domestic CNN channel became the most viable alternative.
Nevertheless, the international news regularly featured in CNN’s feed was supplemented with Sky’s insertion of two BBC news bulletins daily. The BBC’s news content was beamed in via satellite from London.
Viewers had to adjust to an unfamiliar time perspective. For instance the Daybreak news programme screened at midnight NZT, the CNN Evening News from Atlanta at 2.30pm NZT, CNN Sports Tonight at 3.30pm NZT and so on. The weekly roundup of sport, news, science and other topics was broadcast in New Zealand during the early hours of Monday morning instead of the Sunday daytime slots intended for US audiences.
Due to the channel’s status as a US domestic programme, commercial spots were built in. However, equipment at the Warkworth satellite station allowed these spots to be replaced with Sky’s own channel promos.
Sky Movies
Sky Movies started transmission at noon on the afternoon of Friday 18 May 1990 with Ask Dr Ruth, a sex advice talk show hosted by German-American sex therapist Ruth Westheimer.
This was followed at 12.30pm by the 1970 dramedy film, Loving, which centred on the marital, professional and romantic challenges of a New York illustrator (George Segal). The 1986 sci-fi film SpaceCamp, featuring a young Joaquin Phoenix, screened at 2pm.
In its first few months Sky Movies opened its daily transmissions with a two-hour block of ‘general entertainment’ programming. The programme line-up consisted of Ask Dr Ruth, Loving, The Beachcombers, Wild, Wild World of Animals, Fun in the Sun and America’s Top 10. The schedule also featured two animated Star Wars spin-offs: Star Wars: Droids and Star Wars: Ewoks. Following the entertainment block at 2pm, non-stop movies were screened until closedown at around midnight.
According to Harold Anderson, Sky’s programming director at the time, almost all Sky Movies screenings in its first month were New Zealand television premieres. Anderson also stated that ‘the movies would be 100% first run on television within a month or so’.
Schedules on subscription channels typically included reruns, but due to Sky Movies’ novelty, repeat screenings were not implemented until weeks later. Films screened during Sky’s first week, such as Willow and The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, were scheduled for repeat screenings on specific dates. Other movies like Princess Bride, The Man from Snowy River, Hamburger Hill and Angel Heart followed a similar repeat pattern.
Films were age-classified to facilitate parents in preventing children from accessing unsuitable content by removing the smart card from the decoder.
While Sky Network Television initially claimed it would screen films before TVNZ and TV3, this exclusivity did not apply to movies from The Walt Disney Company (including titles from Disney and Touchstone) as TV3 had exclusive rights to those.
Sky Sport
Sky Sport commenced at 5pm on the evening of Friday 18 May 1990 with The Opening Shot, a comprehensive preview of upcoming Sky Sport content and highlights from the previous sporting week.
The creation of a dedicated sports channel provided flexibility for live coverage, allowing events to extend beyond scheduled closedown times. In Sky’s second week this flexibility was utilised for cricket coverage from Britain, with the New Zealand cricket team facing England in two ODIs (originally scheduled for 10pm on Wednesday 23 May and 10.45pm on Friday 25 May).
Anderson emphasised the importance of creating a balanced sports content that appealed to us as New Zealanders. While ESPN provided substantial content from the US, Sky had a contract with the BBC for over 250 hours of British sport annually and TVNZ’s contributions were evident in programmes like Rugby at Noon on Sunday afternoons and Rugby Extra.
Sky’s coverage of major events like Wimbledon and the 1990 FIFA World Cup did not prevent TVNZ sports fans from accessing these events.
Murray Needham, TVNZ’s assistant head of sport at the time, explained that TVNZ had exclusive broadcast rights for events like Wimbledon, separate from pay, satellite, cable or other forms of television.
“The TVNZ sports service will not be less because Sky is covering events. We hope they will be very much complementary - on some occasions TVNZ will cover an event live and Sky will run highlights or Sky will be live and we will have a package of highlights. Viewers of both TVNZ and Sky could be occasions be watching the same events live.” - Murray Needham
During Sky’s first two months, live broadcasts featured rugby league matches (Winfield Cup and State of Origin), French rugby during their Australian tour, basketball games (Rheineck Basketball League) and cricket series between New Zealand and England.
Local rugby matches, specifically All Black tests against Scotland, were primarily shown as delayed broadcasts.
Sky allocated significant screen time to motorsport, international golf, the 1990 FIFA World Cup, boxing, AMA wrestling, NBA basketball, tennis and the women’s pro bowling tour.
VideoCrypt decoders and subscriptions
VideoCrypt decoders for unscrambling the Sky signal were available for purchase at $399 from major retailers and through Sky Network Television. Alternatively, they could be rented for $13.50 per month. Each decoder contained a subscription form and smart card, and the subscription fee for Sky’s three channels (Sky News, Sky Sport and Sky Movies) was $11.25 per week or $45 per month.
According to Brian Green, Sky’s director of engineering at the time, the decoder available at launch lacked a built-in tuner and required users to connect it to a VCR with a tuner. However, this setup prevented users from recording other channels while watching Sky.
Green further noted that users viewing TVNZ or TV3 could not simultaneously record Sky using a VCR with the decoder setup.
“We are having decoders built which will have tuners in them, enabling viewers to record any of the channels while watching any other channel. But they will be about $100 dearer than the present models.” - Brian Green
Television sets equipped with a 20-pin SCART connection allowed the decoder to be directly plugged into the TV without the need for a VCR.
“All the ancillary services for television in Europe have one thing in common - they need to be decoded and the world standard for access to decoders is the SCART connection. We are just a bit behind. Some newer model television sets are likely to have it on already, but our information is that the numbers in New Zealand are low.” - Brian Green