First airing in 1982, Sky One will now be replaced with a new channel that purports to “showcase” all of Sky’s best content.
Sky’s flagship channel, Sky One, will be retired completely and replaced by the new Sky Showcase, which will seek to display the best of the broadcaster’s content in one place.
Launched in 1982 (the same year as Channel 4), Sky One has been a mainstay of British TV for decades, and is probably best known for bringing a host of US TV shows to the UK. The channel will always hold a special place in my heart for having shown The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle back-to-back in the early evenings; but now that it’s gone for good, my nostalgia for the early noughties will have to just be satisfied with fanatically following the romantic reunion of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.
Here to replace Sky One on the same slot (106) is a new channel called Sky Showcase. Speaking to Variety, Sky’s director of program strategy, Jamie Morris, said “bring in content from across our portfolio. And it’ll be curated, so at any one point you can see a documentary sat side by side with an arts program side by side a comedy or a drama. So it will be literally all of our [hero] content across Sky in one destination.”
Just in case you still haven’t got your head around this high concept, he went on to say: “Showcase is a very explicit name. You know what it is, which is showcasing the best of Sky.”
An entirely new channel named Sky Max will also be launched by the broadcaster, and this is set to be the home of “blockbuster entertainment”, including The Flight Attendant and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
Meanwhile, speculation as to the future of Sky Atlantic continues to hang in the air; once Sky’s exclusive rights deal with HBO expires in 2025, it is thought the the US network may launch its HBO Max streaming service in the UK, which it has so far held off from doing. However, there has no no official confirmation of any such plans just yet.
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