Sky Scottish

The service was a joint venture between British Sky Broadcasting and ITV franchise Scottish Television owners SMG plc, was aimed at Scots living outside Scotland who would not otherwise be able to receive Scottish-related programming, such as that also transmitted by Grampian or the BBC.^[1]

The station's main programmes included an extra edition of Scottish Television's regional news programme Scotland Today and episodes of Take the High Road from 1994. Celtic F.C.'s 1997 pre-season friendlies were shown on the channel. Scotsport was also shown on the channel as well as spin-off show Extra Time, and there was also The Football Show presented by Jim Delahunt and Peter McGuire.

Despite BSkyB and SMG entering into a seven-year contract to run the service,^[2] it was closed down after 18 months. Its closure was explained as the channel having failed to meet its financial targets.^[3] Reports suggested that only The Ibrox Club Hour and The Celtic Park Hour, programmes relating to Rangers and Celtic football clubs, had attracted more than 10,000 viewers.^[4]

Speaking about its demise, the managing director of SMG at the time was Donald Emslie, described the service as having "been a valuable learning experience" for his company.^[5] SMG's finance director, Gary Hughes, stated that the service had shown "it is very difficult to access a Scottish audience outside Scotland",^[1] but also that Scottish audiences wanted more home-grown programmes.

• Official website (archived)
• stv.tv

This article relating to television in Scotland is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e