[Stooky Bill]

Not sure I follow your logic. History tells us that many of them in fact did merge together to form Telewest, who along with NTL were essentially giant loss making debt ridden entities before they too merged together. Both sides had content interests to varying extents - particularly Flextech in the case of Telewest. 

I'm not sure I see a reason why BSB couldn't have been part of that mix.

They did, but not for many years later. BSB needed rescueing when cable was all small seperate companies. 

BSB merging with Westminster Cable or Videotron wouldn't have helped either company. There were no synergies to exploit between the the two and the costs and losses of BSBs operation dwarfed that of a cable company. Digging up roads is expensive, BSB were operating spacecraft! 

Could they have got together a large group of cable companies and merged them all together with BSB? Even if it was allowed by law or the ITC it would take ages and there'd still be little benefit. And if they did the satellite bit was still struggling to make that business work without having the distraction of lots of other businesses to integrate with. 

Cable TV only really came mainstream when it all became Virgin Media and even then it was a minority platform. If BSB had survived that long then it would had been a real possibility.

[Humphrey Hacker]

Watching Matthew Harris' series on BSB highlights the sophistication that the network had (*). It was very much the establishment choice and in a different political culture would have done well. Alas that was not to be.

(*Heil Honey I'm Home notwithstanding!)

[WillPS]

They did, but not for many years later. BSB needed rescueing when cable was all small seperate companies. 

BSB merging with Westminster Cable or Videotron wouldn't have helped either company. There were no synergies to exploit between the the two and the costs and losses of BSBs operation dwarfed that of a cable company. Digging up roads is expensive, BSB were operating spacecraft! 

Could they have got together a large group of cable companies and merged them all together with BSB? Even if it was allowed by law or the ITC it would take ages and there'd still be little benefit. And if they did the satellite bit was still struggling to make that business work without having the distraction of lots of other businesses to integrate with. 

Cable TV only really came mainstream when it all became Virgin Media and even then it was a minority platform. If BSB had survived that long then it would had been a real possibility.

Yes, but BSB mostly needed rescuing because all their projections were based on the presumption their only competition was cable TV.

The synergies would have been largely the same as the ones between cable companies (or indeed between themselves and Sky in the real world). Back office/sales and content.

I have no doubt that their predictions were still wild and they would still have been a mess with or without Sky but they didn't expect to have a competing system on sale at Currys, Comet, Rumblows etc; leave alone one which beat them to market by several months and had far lower fixed costs.

Let's not forget that Sky was also a money pit at the point they and BSB merged, as was every single cable company at the point they merged or were consumed. Being a loss making money pit is not the same as being unviable - it's over when the banks decide there is no money to be made from you any more.

[Neil Jones]

Watching Matthew Harris' series on BSB highlights the sophistication that the network had (*). It was very much the establishment choice and in a different political culture would have done well. Alas that was not to be.

(*Heil Honey I'm Home notwithstanding!)

As we saw with land based TV, being high brow and sophisticated doesn't get butts on seats. If it had survived it would have had to go downmarket to ITV's level and possibly even lower.

Heil Honey only get s reputation as being a piece of tat because that reputation is almost certainly based on talking heads to the sort of repackaged "top <something or other" stuff that Channel 5 keeps pushing out. Those heads probably saw "key" portions of this show nicked off YouTube and made comments.

Could probably be argued Heil Honey was too clever for its own good as I don't think the pilot was that bad to be honest (and let's be fair, Hitler's been ridiculed and parodied so many times over the years in film and TV that Heil Honey looks relatively tame by comparison). Like most things that were heavily controversial at the time, you look at it and think what's the problem here?

[James2001]

As we saw with land based TV, being high brow and sophisticated doesn't get butts on seats.  If it had survived it would have had to go downmarket to ITV's level and possibly even lower.

Only need to look at what happened to the "high brow" LWT, after the ITA decided that viewers "needed" such a service. Within a matter of months they were making On The Buses, and were pretty much known for sitcoms and light entertainment afterwards, which is a million miles from the content they were actually awarded the franchise for. Operas and David Frost every night didn't cut it however much they thought it would enrich viewers.

---

Heil Honey only get s reputation as being a piece of tat because that reputation is almost certainly based on talking heads to the sort of repackaged "top <something or other" stuff that Channel 5 keeps pushing out.  Those heads probably saw "key" portions of this show nicked off YouTube and made comments.

Could probably be argued Heil Honey was too clever for its own good as I don't think the pilot was that bad to be honest (and let's be fair, Hitler's been ridiculed and parodied so many times over the years in film and TV that Heil Honey looks relatively tame by comparison).  Like most things that were heavily controversial at the time, you look at it and think what's the problem here?

Then you get the story that it was "pulled because of the controversy of the pilot episode", which also isn't true. They went on to make a whole series after that pilot episode was screened, the reason it wasn't shown was down to the merger and replacement with Sky One. If it was so controversial that they didn't want to show it, they wouldn't have made the rest of the series to begin with.

Pretty much no BSB content made it to Sky, TV Ark had a clip of Sky One showing "Cool Cube", which was a kid's magazine programme (made by Granada) that went out originally on Galaxy, and Sky News showing Now Sir Robin. I don't think either lasted long, and I can't think of anything else that transferred over (nearly a third of Jupiter Moon was infamously not seen until Sci Fi showed it years later), so they probably wouldn't have taken Heil Honey no matter what the reputation was.

[robertclark125]

The now defunct website Vintage Broadcasting had a feature on BSB, and it claimed that an executive, hearing of the Sky BSB merger, didn't want Rupert Murdoch to get his hands on his Jaguar, and so he drove it into the Thames!

The story goes he was rescued, unhurt, and a police officer asked him why he done what he done. When he explained about the Sky BSB merger, the officer replied "S**t, I've just bought a new BSB system "!

[Humphrey Hacker]

What I didnt know until years later was that Heil Honey was shown after an episode of Dad's Army !Now whether that was intentional or not is unknown.

[Stooky Bill]

Could probably be argued Heil Honey was too clever for its own good as I don't think the pilot was that bad to be honest (and let's be fair, Hitler's been ridiculed and parodied so many times over the years in film and TV that Heil Honey looks relatively tame by comparison).  Like most things that were heavily controversial at the time, you look at it and think what's the problem here?

Yes it's a classic example of being ahead of its time and the wrong broadcaster. 10 years later on Channel 4 it would have gained a rather different reputation.

[James2001]

A bit like Hardwicke House, I think that show would have been a cult classic had it been post-watershed BBC2 or Channel 4. it wasn't really that shocking even compared to things that were going out around that time in those places, but it certainly shouldn't have been in a heavily promoted pre-watershed ITV slot.

Not really sure why ITV have spent the last 35 years supressing it either (apparently Network were on the verge of bringing it out on DVD, but ITV said no), it's incredibly tame compared to programmes we've had since, and anyone buying a DVD would know the show's reputation anyway.

[Stooky Bill]

A bit like Hardwicke House, I think that show would have been a cult classic had it been post-watershed BBC2 or Channel 4. it wasn't really that shocking even compared to things that were going out around that time in those places, but it certainly shouldn't have been in a heavily promoted pre-watershed ITV slot.

Not really sure why ITV have spent the last 35 years supressing it either (apparently Network were on the verge of bringing it out on DVD, but ITV said no), it's incredibly tame compared to programmes we've had since, and anyone buying a DVD would know the show's reputation anyway.

It's not that suppressed, all 7 episodes are available (unofficially) on YouTube:

youtu.be