This Sky taster ‘concept’ has been around for about 15 years, ever since Sky took over Prime. Will be interesting to see how it works.
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I mean, that does still exist after all in a form, it’s just Sky 5 now… and as much as they could merge the two and call it “Sky 4” and it’d work… I suspect they always wanted Prime and now Sky Open to be a bit more than just “current Sky 5 but free-to-air”, with news and sports content added.
Unlike, say, the more tightly entertainment-focused example over the years of, say, (British) Sky Three/Pick on UK Freeview. It’s meant to be a “barker” for all of Sky, including the sport in particular, unlike the UK example where the focus was initially to be a barker for their Sky One specifically.
Especially when it’s not like Sky 5 is their premium flagship channel these days, most of the premium content is on the likes of SoHo after all.
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skyFREE sounds better to me, skyLITE (bought to you by velux)… skyHIGH, skyPIE, skyWHY?
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isn’t there already Sky 5? Wouldn’t Sky1 and Sky2 be better?
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Sky Open sounds like a popup channel for the Tennis haha.
Funnily enough I did a mock last year rebranding Prime to a Sky ‘window shopping’ channel. Called Sky First and guessed the new bulletin ‘First News.’ 
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Refocusing as a golf tournament too by the sounds of it.
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freeview TV guide for next wed/the looks much the same as normal… I wouldn’t expect much to change
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But what about Prime Plus 1?
I forgot all about Sky 5, I still remember Sky1 from back in the day and forgot about the current incarnation. I’m just not feeling the open brand.
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Sky Open would sound nice as a actual golf tournament actually 
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Is there any other country in the world where a pay TV service is allowed to own a free to air TV channel?
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Doesn’t Sky UK have some Freeview products?
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Probably plenty, although that shouldn’t be a shock in places where DTT was used to greatly expand choice, rather than mostly protect the incumbents.
See the example about Pick in the UK above, where Sky UK was finally even allowed to take a small stake in one of the two companies running their Freeview. There’d be a few more than that by now, don’t have time to look up exactly how many.
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Sky Open +1. That’s a mouthful.
How would you say the TVNZ 1 & 2 timeshifted channels? Sky Open has the same amount of syllables as Channel 1, and one less than TVNZ 1.
I highly doubt anyone says 1+1, or 2+1
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I still don’t understand why they have these channels. Is it just to make it seem like there are more channels on TV?
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They probably made sense 10 years ago, but with on-demand services so widely available now I don’t see the point of them anymore.
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I just think now its just lazy and cost effective. They allocated the spectrum and dont have enough programming to create another standalone channel, so they show the timeshifted channel.
Also not a bad sell to advertisers in primetime knowing their ads will be running twice
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I have to say I’m surprised that the Prime branding existed for as long as it did. I remember the days of when it was more or less a Nine Network relay station in the 2000s. Visiting Hamilton in 2006, it was quite good to watch Temptation at 7:30am then Today at 8am and the Nine morning news at 1pm. Having Today was handy at the time because TV1 was showing the Turin Winter Olympics in the morning instead of Breakfast.
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