Digital, Interactive and Web TV

Interactive Examples - Sky News' Election Night

On 7th June 2001 the UK had a General Election. Viewers of BSkyB's news channel, Sky News, were able to use the interactive facilities of digital TV via its Open service, to choose the information they wanted to see. They were offered the following selections:

Parties: choose to follow the fortunes of a particular party: Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats and see the news as it unfolds from key locations around the country, or go behind-the-scenes of Sky News itself.

Fortuitously, the colours of 3 of 4 buttons on the remote control matched (or almost matched) the colours of the 3 main parties (Conservatives: blue; Labour: red; and Liberal Democrats: yellow being close to orange!). The green was not used for the Green Party or other minority parties but for Sky News. Does this say something about the make-up or perceived make-up of Sky's viewers?

Election Screen mock-up Mock-up of a Sky News screen with text enlarged for clarity

Highlights: catch up and see what you missed out with highlights constantly updated.

Results: get up-to-the-minute national and regional results, including the number of seats held by parties.

Vote 2001: from the nerve centre of Sky News' HQ, leading political editor Adam Boulton brings you results and analysis with live links, computer graphics and Virtual Reality displays.

How it works:

An on-screen red Active icon tells viewers when the service is available.
Pressing the interactive button brings up a menu. Then using the coloured buttons or the directional buttons and the select button the viewer can select the required option.

Other informational services:

Sky News Online: An internet web site www.sky.com/news showing the latest election information. Viewers could use Open's email facility to send questions to the Sky News team to put to the politicians. Note that viewers cannot access Sky.com from their Sky Digital television set as Open is a secure "wall garden" service.
Sky News Radio: daily analysis and comprehensive round-ups on Election Night. Presumably this was broadcast on one of the digital TV/radio channels.

Mock-up of the Email Screen with text enlarged for clarity

WAP: the latest election news through a mobile phone.

For the Election period, BSkyB was running a special "half price" promotion. A standard installation was available for £20 (normally £40) if the subscriber also choose to subscribe to any Sky World package (£32-34 per month) for 12 months. This offer included a free* minidish satellite aerial and a free* digibox set-top box. *Free means free loan. Subscribers were also required to connect their digibox to a telephone line. This is used for some of the interactive services and to upload viewers viewing statistics and to download new software.

Other Broadcasters

As in previous years both the BBC and ITV devoted a whole channel in the evening and throughout the night to announcing the winners of the 650 or so constituencies, for predicting the outcome and analysing the implications for the future Government. Both channels have invested substantially in technology for recording, analysing and graphically presenting the results. The BBC replaced its mechanical "swing-ometer" (a large dial with a pointer that shows the voting swing from one party to another and the resulting outcome in terms of number of seats and overall majority) with an electronic version. They also had a 3 dimensional graphical picture of the seats in the Parliament with figures in each of the parties colours. Finally, there was a ticker-tape along the bottom of the screen displaying all the results. However, non of this was interactive though the BBC (and probably ITV) did have a web site with the same information.

Back to Interactive Contents

External Resources

Sky News, 2001, On 7th June you can take control of the country, Sky News' advertising brochure, June 2001
Also see the full list of resources for this web site for other related resources.

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Parties: choose to follow the fortunes of a particular party: Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats and see the news as it unfolds from key locations around the country, or go behind-the-scenes of Sky News itself. Fortuitously, the colours of 3 of 4 buttons on the remote control matched (or almost matched) the colours of the 3 main parties (Conservatives: blue; Labour: red; and Liberal Democrats: yellow being close to orange!). The green was not used for the Green Party or other minority parties but for Sky News. Does this say something about the make-up or perceived make-up of Sky's viewers?	Mock-up of a Sky News screen with text enlarged for clarity
Highlights: catch up and see what you missed out with highlights constantly updated.
Results: get up-to-the-minute national and regional results, including the number of seats held by parties.
Vote 2001: from the nerve centre of Sky News' HQ, leading political editor Adam Boulton brings you results and analysis with live links, computer graphics and Virtual Reality displays.