Sky Open (TV channel)
Sky Open (formerly known as Prime) is a New Zealand free-to-air television network. It airs a varied mix of programming, largely imported from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
This article is about the New Zealand television channel. For the tennis tournament, see Sky Open. For the 2013 version of the tennis tournament, see Sky Open 2013. For other uses as Open Sky, see Open Sky (disambiguation).Country
New Zealand
National
30 August 1998
Prime (1998–2023)
Channel 15
It was originally owned by Prime Television Limited in Australia. Prime later entered into a joint-venture agreement with Nine Entertainment Co. (Nine Network Australia) in February 2002,[1][2] causing the network's graphics to look like the Nine Network. On 8 February 2006, the Commerce Commission gave Sky clearance to purchase the station for NZ$31 million.[3]
Prime's analogue terrestrial signals had covered 91% of the population via the state-owned Kordia transmission network. It is currently available free-to-air on Sky on satellite and Kordia on terrestrial.
Programming[edit]
Sports[edit]
With Prime 100% owned by Sky Network Television, it has access to a large selection of sports content that Sky broadcasts, this content is typically delayed with some live coverage of certain events to fulfill free-to-air requirements, as Sky is effectively selling them to itself. Prime used to broadcast a weekly Sunday afternoon sports highlights show called Ultimate Sport Sunday, which included highlights of cricket, rugby union, NRL, Formula One, WRC and Moto GP.
Prime was also granted the rights to broadcast the free to air screening of Euro 2008. Free to air coverage of the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympics was seen on Prime with Sky being the new rights holder. Prime is the Free TV broadcaster of the ANZ Premiership and shows highlights weekly.[17] Prime also broadcasts one-hour versions of WWE Raw, WWE NXT and WWE Smackdown.[18]
Broadcast area
National
1 February 2017
Prime Plus 1 (2017–2023)
