http://www.sky.co.uk
If there is one overriding factor in Sky’s commercial success since its broadcasting inception in 1989, it is probably the high quotient of sports coverage. With the extraordinary growth in the popularity of football, Sky is cashing in on this formula more than ever before. Fittingly, then, the Sky Online website adheres to the sports-heavy recipe even more so than Sky’s satellite channels.
Whilst the site is split into the main categories of News, Sport, Listings and Weather, the only section of any real substance Sports, which appears above News on the main screen. The News area is a fairly cursory affair which includes the subdivisions of UK & World, Business, Technology and, of course, Sport. Each section only contains about six or seven stories which themselves are fairly bite-sized. There is no archive of stories and no search option on the news sections which lends credence to the notion that time and resources have been channeled away from news and into sports.
The result of this is that the sports section of the site is very good, whilst the remainder is pretty pedestrian. Sports has sections for football, cricket, rugby, golf, boxing and tennis. Of these football is predictably the most comprehensive. A good feature on each of these sections is the Scoreflash which shows the latest score from the biggest events in each of the sports. The Football section has club news and facts for every club in the Premiership and Division One – results, scorers, fixtures: the usual stuff for the statistic-junkie. Each sports area also shows when coverage of any related event will be shown on a Sky channel.
A Listings section shows the broadcaster’s shows by channel and date. Each programme has an active link to further information about that particular show. On this screen there is a bit called ‘Critics Choice?’. Amusingly, every single programme I looked at said ‘Critics Choice? Yes’. Even Tattooed Teenage Alien. Very critical. There are also some dodgy links in the listings section – returning the old 404 Not Found message for each of the Sky channel logos.
Another nice touch is a link from the Weather section which is supposed to take you to a weather camera somewhere in Eastern Europe – in case you want to check out the weather conditions in the Urals. Unfortunately it lands you right in the middle of a page written entirely in gaudily-coloured Russian.
The Sky One section offers links to the websites of some of the channel’s big hits – The X Files, The Simpsons, and the latest exercise in political incorrectness – South Park.
On the whole, Sky Online has a decent design which is held together nicely by consistent menus and styles. If the non-sport aspect of it were made more substantial, the whole would be a good all-round source of information.
Reviewer: Scott Billings
