Sky Angel was a U.S. operator of Christian television networks; it operated three channels, Angel One, Angel Two, and KTV, all of which were exclusive to Dish Network. The company's corporate headquarters were located in Naples, Florida.[1] The company also operated a Chattanooga, Tennessee location where programming, engineering and network operations resided.[2]
Sky Angel satellite service launched in 1996. The channel lineup would consist primarily of religious networks, along with other secular television networks which the service considered to be family-oriented. The service featured 36 channels in its lineup as of November 2002, consisting of 20 television channels and 16 radio channels. Sky Angel reached around 115,000 subscribers, mostly within the Central United States.[2]
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On January 22, 2007, Sky Angel partnered with ShifTV to launch Sky Angel IPTV service in Canada. By October 2007, this partnership has dissolved due to ShifTV being restructured to launch an adult pornography service. On July 10, 2007, Sky Angel launched a separate IPTV service in the United States. This involved a partnership with NeuLion to develop a new over-the-top IPTV-based platform, which offered increased channel capacity and network DVR support. Sky Angel has also contemplated offering internet and mobile television services, but declined to do so.[2]
In 2009, C-SPAN was pulled from Sky Angel after being on its IPTV service for 2 days. In November 2012, Sky Angel filed an antitrust lawsuit against the network claiming that its owners (a consortium of major television providers) pulled its programming from Sky Angel to put the service at a disadvantage against its conventional rivals. The court dismissed the case without prejudice, believing that Sky Angel's case did not have enough evidence to justify its claims that C-SPAN's owners were trying to enforce a monopoly position. C-SPAN denied Sky Angel's arguments, and claimed the removal was for contractual reasons relating to IPTV. Sky Angel, in its filing with the court, showed that CSPAN was already streaming its channels over the web to the public free of charge. In June 2013, the company subsequently filed a second antitrust suit. The claims were rejected, with the court arguing once again that Sky Angel had produced no actual evidence of collusion among the C-SPAN consortium.[9]
Sky Angel's satellite farm outside Chattanooga, Tenn. looks like any cable-television headend--down to the gray-haired engineer who strides out of the electronics shed sporting a short-sleeved dress shirt, narrow tie and pocket protector. With 19 state-of-the-art satellite dishes, the faith-based and family-themed broadcaster can download more than 50 cable-television channels and deliver them potentially to hundreds of thousands of customers nationwide.
Scott and Johnson have met with Justice Department lawyers who are investigating possible antitrust violations in the programming industry. And Sky Angel has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to force Discovery to honor its contract under rules designed to prevent companies affiliated with cable-TV networks from discriminating against competitors. This last move has drawn opposition from unlikely sources, including Google, which may not want its own online-video business to fall under FCC regulation.
Johnson inherited Sky Angel from his late father, Robert Johnson Sr., a Detroit marketing executive with a dream of building a religious, and family-themed, television network free of the sex and violence on popular TV. After working with religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, Johnson Sr. realized his biggest barrier was distribution, so he applied for the first allocation of direct broadcast satellite frequencies in 1980 and won eight. He then struck a joint venture with Dish Network, under which Dish paid for the use of some of his frequencies and carried Sky Angel over its EchoStar III satellite. Sky Angel grew to 115,000 customers paying $14.99 a month, most of them in the center of the country.
Sky Angel's marketing stalled after it switched to the Web and lost the Discovery channels. It has recently launched a broader, G-rated network called Fave to recruit nonreligious viewers. (The company declines to disclose the exact number of subscribers, but it's fewer than 50,000.)
Johnson says he's now focused on convincing the FCC that he operates a multichannel video programming distributor, or MVPD. Back when satellite TV was starting, cable titans like John Malone's TCI refused to sell programming to satellite networks for fear they would undercut them on price. So Congress rewrote the telecom act in 1992 to ban companies affiliated with cable-TV operators from discriminating against rivals.
The FCC has some surprising allies, including Google, the normally aggressive crusader for Net neutrality that launched its own cable network in Kansas City in July. Instead of urging the FCC to give Internet video networks the same protections as cable and satellite TV, Google said the FCC should move cautiously because any expansion of the concept of an MVPD "would have a significant and disruptive impact on the vibrant and evolving marketplace for video services." (Read: YouTube.) Intel also urged the FCC to blow out the proceedings into lengthy rulemaking since the issue will have ramifications for many other companies.
Sky Angel was a U.S. operator of Christian television networks; it operated three channels, Angel One, Angel Two, and KTV, all of which were exclusive to Dish Network. The company's corporate headquarters were located in Naples, Florida. The company also operated a Chattanooga, Tennessee location where programming, engineering and network operations resided. The company previously operated as a Christian-oriented television provider carrying religious and family-oriented programming, first as a satellite television service, and later as an over-the-top internet television provider. The shift to an IPTV platform was later accompanied by the spin-off of the provider's secular offerings into a second service known as FAVE TV. On January 14, 2014, Sky Angel ceased its IPTV business, citing that because it did not fall under the traditional legal definition of a multichannel video programming distributor, it was unable to employ legal remedies for its allegations that broadcasters were discriminating against its business model by preventing carriage of their channels.
Sky Angel satellite service launched in 1996. The channel lineup would consist primarily of religious networks, along with other secular television networks which the service considered to be family-oriented. The service featured 36 channels in its lineup as of November 2002, consisting of 20 television channels and 16 radio channels. Sky Angel reached around 115,000 subscribers, mostly within the Central United States.[1]
On January 22, 2007, Sky Angel partnered with ShifTV to launch Sky Angel IPTV service in Canada. By October 2007, this partnership has dissolved due to ShifTV being restructured to launch an adult pornography service. On July 10, 2007, Sky Angel launched a separate IPTV service in the United States. This involved a partnership with NeuLion to develop a new over-the-top IPTV-based platform, which offered increased channel capacity and network DVR support. Sky Angel has also contemplated offering internet and mobile television services, but declined to do so.[1]
In 2009, C-SPAN was pulled from Sky Angel after being on its IPTV service for 2 days. In November 2012, Sky Angel filed an antitrust lawsuit against the network claiming that its owners (a consortium of major television providers) pulled its programming from Sky Angel to put the service at a disadvantage against its conventional rivals. The court dismissed the case without prejudice, believing that Sky Angel's case did not have enough evidence to justify its claims that C-SPAN's owners were trying to enforce a monopoly position. C-SPAN denied Sky Angel's arguments, and claimed the removal was for contractual reasons relating to IPTV. Sky Angel, in its filing with the court, showed that CSPAN was already streaming its channels over the web to the public free of charge. In June 2013, the company subsequently filed a second antitrust suit. The claims were rejected, with the court arguing once again that Sky Angel had produced no actual evidence of collusion among the C-SPAN consortium.[8]
Luna halo, Switchfoot, Earthsuit. No, these are not names for a constellation, a particular ailment or a new line of hip clothing. But throw out these names to the average Christian teenager who is "in the know" about the progressive side of Christian music, and you'll learn that these are the names of some of the most popular alternative Christian music groups around, quicker than you can say "Joy Electric" (yes, another one of those groups with a funny name). And it's music groups like these that are the epitome of TVU, a new alternative Christian music video channel making its television debut this week on Sky Angel. The nation's only Christian-based, direct-to-home satellite television service, Sky Angel offers 33 channels of what it describes as Christ-centered and family-friendly TV and radio programming to homes, churches and businesses nationwide via an 18-inch satellite dish. "The vision for TVU is to take the best music videos from Christian artists and package the Gospel in a relevant manner that will communicate to a 12-24 year old," said John Owens, operations manager for TVU. "Our target viewer is the skateboarding, nose pierced, tattooed teen who would never step foot in a church or watch a traditional Christian TV program." TVU's format is made up of a broad range of the "edgier" styles of Christian music put to video, from alternative to rap, pop to metal. The beyond-mainstream format is designed to evangelize the Gospel to non-Christian teens and twenty-somethings while also appealing to a young Christian listening audience. Popular features of the channel include its weekday interactive countdown show and TVUi, an interactive program that combines music videos with news, sports, and real-time comments from the TVU Web site chat room. "Our Web site is part of our connection to our viewers," said Owens, who promises more shows and more interaction with viewers in the future. "We do what Jesus does in all of our lives... reach the lost on their turf, and tell them God wants a relationship with them," said Owens. "This is the same method Jesus used when he walked the earth, and like Jesus, we draw a lot of criticism, but we feel that this is what God has called us to do, and the response from teens confirms we are doing the right thing. "It's exciting to see the e-mails from teens that say this is what they have been waiting for," added Owens. "We are so grateful to Sky Angel for giving us the opportunity to reach their audience." Launched in December, 1996, the Sky Angel programming service became the first and only multi-channel direct broadcast satellite (DBS) system with a mission to provide television and radio programming based on Judeo-Christian values. For more information about Sky Angel and TVU go to www.tvulive.com and www.skyangel.com. 2ff7e9595c
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