[ckck1704]

I’m intrigued as to what Sky’s sudden motivation to rebrand the channel is. 

They’ve seemed happy enough to leave the channel alone and use it as to show Monkey Life, Stargate and cop shows on repeat for the past 10 years (the Premier Legaue games during Covid aside). Freeview isn’t exactly booming at the minute and Sky seem to have a decent line-up of channels already, so it’s not as if Sky Mix is plugging any sort of gap.

It's probably due to the current trend of people cancelling tv subscriptions to save money, so sky are doing this as a way for freeview viewers to continue watching their premium content, albeit after a long delay.

[cable]

Sky’s FTA strategy was never one that was committed.

The Early Digital era (2005-2011)
When Sky Three was launched, it was given some shows that were shown on Sky One but had ended their runs e.g. Hex, Futurama, Relic hunter, 10th Kingdom, Cold Case alongside filler like AirLine and Sky Travel. This was probably viewed as an olive branch by the management as these shows weren't expecting any renewals/new seasons. I recall them airing 24 season 3 but the future series never transferred. LOST/Prison Break didn't make it especially around the time they lost carriage on Virgin Media. This continued throughput the Sky3 era where they experimented with the Free Weekend Pass, the latter of which co-incided with their takeover on Virgin Media Television/Living TV Group. This caused Pick to begin to get a boost in content, Skys non drama UK originals e.g. Pineapple Dance Studios/ Ross Kemp on Gangs. Throughout this period Freeview continued to Grow and equalled and Eclipsed Sky Subscribers.

Around Digital Switchover (2011ish)
It was around the time Sky Atlantic launched, that they became bullish on their pay TV offering which except for Sports/Movies was basic entertainment. Atlantic was never offered on. good terms to Virgin Media and Sky sports news was removed from Freeview and Sky 3 was rebranded to Pick TV. in the attempt to disassociate in viewers minds free content and Sky. It was around this time that Pick began to take on shows from the former Living TV Group Channels like bravo and Channel One (ex. Virgin1). Around this time the Digital switchover was nearing completion, Freeview HD was launching and had the 2 additional muxes to play with), Sky had to put much effort into maintaining the subscribers and started to push into original production.

The Streaming Era (2015-present)
Since the digital switchover, Sky had pushed heavily into its original production, moving away from the earlier book inspired ideas like The Hogfather, Skellig and Thorne into returning series like Agatha Raisin and Brassic, COBRA their network has become genre based. During this time, the audience has become more fragmented with the rise of VOD and new streaming services which they have attempted to integrate into their line up (e.g. Netflix and Paramount+ and Discovery Plus). Linear is ever decreasing and young people tend to prefer apps. Content you pay for only has a short shelf life before its condemned to repeats.

The future (2025 -2040)
Going forward, there will be people prepared to pay for content which is likely to be well catered for by the SVOD market, and people not prepared to pay for content, which AVOD and FAST services cater for very well. With Sky, Glass or Stream is their future, overtime they will end up becoming a content aggregator as they struggle to keep up with the production budgets of the streamers and lose the gatekeeper position, they once were. MAX is potentially launching in 2025, where most premium drama from HBO is tied up in Skys current deal due to expire then. The platforms also allow targeted advertising and allows the collection of data from viewers which can be manipulated. This leaves them with their original content. A free to air channel like Sky Mix will give them an outlet for this and will allow them to suck up ad revenue. Freeview is nearing the end of life, the WRC is wanting its frequencies for mobile broadband use, technically its inferior most channels are still SD and there is only one multiplex – it simply is not the threat it once was. Freely will likely replace freeview and freesat but how successful that is remains to be seen.

[WillPS]

Sky’s FTA strategy was never one that was committed.

I disagree. They were a part of the Freeview lineup from launch and have evolved their offering ever since. Sky Three was an upgrade on Sky Travel and has been more or less the same degree of quality ever since. They could have dropped out completely when they binned off Channel One but instead they installed Challenge which is a far clearer proposition for viewers and went through a bit of a renaissance. Sky Arts was obviously an out and out addition. 

The only real move Sky have ever made to Freeview's overall detriment was to remove Sky Sports News.

This notion that a digital/non-legacy channel changing it's name after 12 years is a sign of wavering commitment is a bit of a nonsense really. They clearly see value in the platform and have consistently since launch. 

Now was deliberately moved downmarket by its first rebrand a decade or so ago, then moved considerably upmarket with it's more recent rebrand. It doesn't mean they aren't committed to their secondary platform offering.

It's all just a reflection of how Sky believe they can best extract revenue from their various platforms and audiences at any one moment in time, and it's perfectly proper for that strategy to shift as viewer/subscriber habits do.

[Kunst]

That's Sky Replay's colour.

Some of the best "general" colours they could use wasted for a repeat channel which is far from being the main focus of Sky.

These colours  need to be used by possibly Sky Max

[CATV]

A Sky Mix trailer for a program aired on Sky News tonight. Looked good and inline with the rest of the Sky family branding wise.

[Andrew Wood]

A couple of snippets of Sky Mix presentation showing on Pick - theident.gallery 

Sky Mix : 2023 Presentation : The Ident Gallery
Sky Mix : 2023 Presentation
  Source: theident.gallery

[Stuart]

A couple of snippets of Sky Mix presentation showing on Pick - theident.gallery 

Quite a simple concept, but actually rather nice.

At least it doesn't look like it was knocked up on PowerPoint during someone's lunchtime like a certain other channel.

[JMT1985]

I like their Pick channel now Sky Mix - maybe the should have blended the two names and made it Sky Pick n Mix?

[JamieMurph25]

A couple of snippets of Sky Mix presentation showing on Pick - theident.gallery 

An SD channel (notable with the owners' credit on the pre-launch promo, where it's unreadable), I can imagine those with Sky Glass or Sky Stream will get the HD version of this.

[F4C]

This rebrand is a little bit of a gamble on Sky’s part. They’ve seemed quite happy to keep Pick and Challenge at arms’ length for the past few years but now Sky seem to sense they can use Freeview (and Freely I presume) as a shop window for their pay services. 

I guess Sky aren’t arsed about daytime scheduling but rather the 8-10pm primetime slot. They’ve mentioned each day in the week will be themed (drama, comedy, factual, etc) so it should be interesting to see whether Sky really put some effort in this time, or they just find something from 2010 and shove it there and forget about it. 

Saying that, they’ll need to make an effort as it risks devaluing the Sky brand now they’ve brought it back into the fold. The first series of True Detective is a fantastic watch and a really good start. Here’s hoping for more.