Adam Boulton, editor-at-large
This week Sky and Sky News have been celebrating the 30th anniversary of our launch back in 1989. Next week is my 60th birthday. So I’m pondering why I’ve spent half my life working for the same company – “pretty unusual these days” as one of my daughters remarked.
The simplest reason is that it hasn’t ever been the same job. Sky was a start-up company. We did and are doing things that have never been done before. All of us have had a role in shaping what Sky has become. I’ve never got bored nor, I hope, jaded.
Sky News was the world’s second rolling 24/7 TV news channel after CNN, which is based in a totally different news market from the UK.
From the start, for example, we knew we had to be a lot more nimble than the Americans, updating our stories constantly because we were competing with BBC and ITV news bulletins up to four times a day, rather than once-a-day “network newscasts” which contained only about 20 minutes’ worth of news content.
We developed a different approach to our terrestrial competitors. We reported the news as it was happening and we were honest about it.
Our task is to bring you the news as fast and as accurately as we can. We freely admit, and tell viewers, that we are working on the hoof and don’t necessarily have the full picture.
Our reporters have the depth of knowledge to put the story they are covering into context and to speculate responsibly. I remember a serious train crash when our headline reported “Police say over a hundred could be dead” – the BBC went with “Train crash: Over 100 dead” and were wrong. Mercifully, the death toll turned much lower.
Thirty years ago there was no World Wide Web. No Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia, iTunes, Instagram, Amazon, Netflix or Spotify either. Digital was just beginning.
This meant lighter, more flexible cameras and more and more information available to decipher.
We pioneered ways of explaining and presenting news live. It was all a long way from the so-called Birt-Jay thesis, promulgated by a former British ambassador to the US and a director general of the BBC, that TV journalists should first digest what they had filmed before “a mission to explain” to the public what it all meant.
When Sky was launched, a senior BBC executive said that the corporation would never broadcast a news conference live because they didn’t know precisely what would be said. It didn’t take them long to copy us.
Sky News started months before proceedings in the House of Commons were televised. We had to argue with the authorities to make sure the restrictions weren’t so great that it was impossible to follow what was going on.
Come to think of it, there was a lot of arguing in those early days. The then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, and Labour’s Neil Kinnock were accommodating, but my colleagues, Richard Bestic and Judith Dawson and I, often had stand up rows just to get the same access to ministers as was being granted automatically to BBC and ITV.
All this means that Sky News has developed a relaxed but informed style of reporting that now extends from politics and crime, into economics, health, sport and around the world with our excellent foreign correspondents and specialists.
Sky has thrived. When we started there were a few hundred employees – today, there are almost 20,000. I certainly wouldn’t have stayed working for an unsuccessful company because it would have gone out of business. Sky has certainly taken risks and had close shaves
We’ve put on so much muscle that our curated evening news bulletins are often better than those on terrestrial channels too.
We’ve had to be highly adaptable and continue to ride the opportunities created by ever-changing technology. Hence this phone app and our developing range of content beyond TV.
CNN’s founder Ted Turner remarked charmingly, “Rupert will be haemorrhaging red ink for years”, when he heard about the plans for Sky News. He didn’t know the half of it.
Unlike in the US, the dominance of the state-funded BBC makes it almost impossible for TV channels to make significant earnings here from subscriptions. BBC, ITV and Sky News all depend for our existence on being part of a much bigger media and entertainment parent company.
Sky has thrived. When we started there were a few hundred employees – today, there are almost 20,000. I would not have stayed working for an unsuccessful company because it would have gone out of business. Sky has certainly taken risks and had close shaves.
Should our new owners, Comcast NBC Universal, ever wonder about the value of Sky News, it was regulators’ concerns about preserving Sky News as it is that resulted in the delayed takeover and the bidding war between Disney and Comcast which took the offer price from £10 to over £17.
Harriet Harman was the first politician I interviewed for Sky News. This week on All Out Politics she reminded me that people used to ask: “Why is young Boulton throwing away a promising career by going to Sky?”
It hasn’t worked out like that. I’m grateful to have shared in the success and to have made a good living. But it infuriates me that there’s an assumption that we are only in it for the money, whereas BBC journalists are servants of some higher cause.
I believe in free, independent media companies making their way in the world by serving the public.
Harriet Harman also pointed out that Sky News has been good for women journalists, giving them more senior roles than available elsewhere. This week Beth Rigby was appointed our third political editor.
There is only one Kay Burley. No other news channel has a senior current affairs presenter of Kay’s gender, experience and background. There’s only one Martin Brunt on crime too. And only one Alex Crawford. All of us were at Sky on day one and are still here along with a dozen or so colleagues behind the camera lens.
We are doing our best. You, dear reader/viewer/listener, have the final say. Please stay tuned: we’ll be there when you need us.
[Original link : https://news.sky.com/story/amp/sky-views-why-ive-spent-30-years-at-sky-news-11632073]
Updated/maj. 06-04-2019
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