The Sky-Fi Music Show

It never ceases to astonish me that, in Britain during the mid-1980s, you weren’t strictly stuck with just BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 for your viewing options. While most of the country soldiered on with this scant selection, pockets of progression were sprouting elsewhere. Cable television was slowly unspooling its coaxial veins in certain enclaves of the country, bringing with it a whole new world of programming.

Enter Sky Channel. Launched in January 1984, it was one of the poster boys of this brave new era. Cable television, mind you, had long been a humble affair - all shoestring budgets and community goodwill. But now it was now time for professional broadcasters to throw their hats into the ring, ready to expand the RGB horizons of British living rooms.

Variety and quality, though, weren't the best terms to describe the early days of Sky Channel. Providing a diet heavy on American reruns such as Starsky and Hutch and Fantasy Island, viewers in search of something new and exciting were left hungry. Nonetheless, in amongst all this trash, a spark of originality emerged: The Sky-Fi Music Show.

With MTV launching in 1981, the music video had been transformed from the occasionally oddity into an inescapable currency of cultural cool. Suddenly, the airwaves were awash with mini-Hollywood epics playing out alongside the hits of the day, as opposed to just pointing a camera at Showaddywaddy miming onstage. Sky Channel wanted a slice of this pie and wanted it served up by a video jockey. The resulting dish was The Sky-Fi Music Show, debuting on 30th July 1984 and running daily for an hour.

In a nice nod to the satellite-based nature of Sky Channel, transmitting its signal from the ECS-1 communication’s satellite, Sky-Fi Music was set in a space station high above the earth. Here, a revolving selection of video jockeys - Tony Blackburn, Gary Davies and Pat Sharp - introduced music videos, presented competitions and brought viewers all the latest music news. The VJs were also joined by Spencer, a robot caretaker who appeared to have failed an audition as a Red Dwarf extra.

For extra star power, Sky-Fi Music went straight to the heart of the action, bringing in a series of guest presenters from Planet Pop - Holly Johnson, Tony Hadley and Andy Partridge to name but a few. And these guest presenters were a lot of fun, particularly Holly Johnson who, at the height of his fame, exuded plenty of lairy, camp charisma.

Tony Blackburn, whilst not the fresh face of broadcasting in 1984, kept Sky-Fi Music's rocket boosters firing nicely with his safe hands, slick presentation and classic mid-80s knitwear. Meanwhile, newcomers Gary Davies and Pat Sharp embodied the youthful energy of a channel intent on carving out a modern identity. Together, it made for a nice triumvirate, balancing professionalism with an offbeat charm and outlining Sky Channel's intentions early on.

The spaceship set, though primitive, added to the programme's curious atmosphere. Whereas Top of the Pops always had a disco-like air, and The Tube encapsulated a live music venue, Sky-Fi Music was more intimate. A brand, of intimacy, however, which came in two flavours. Some episodes felt meditative - as if the presenter, sat up in the eternal silence of space, was talking directly to the viewer. On the flip side, other episodes were teeming with celebrity guests and lively chatter, offering them a chance to escape screaming fans and enjoy a drink or two.

Musical guests such as Joan Jett, Kiss and Hanoi Rocks all graced the station's orbit, chatting comfortably about upcoming tours and releases. One edition also found room for Unknown Quantity, a sharp suited dance group who sadly appear lost to the mists of time but, at least, managed to charm Tony Blackburn for a moment. There was also room for the absurd, with a diminutive Prince Charles impersonator turning up to chat with Tom Robinson and confess his love of Status Quo.

The lifeblood of Sky-Fi Music, however, was the music videos. It’s the 1980s and the music video is king, so each episode finds time to squeeze in 10 - 12 videos during its hour runtime. Naturally, there’s an endless stream of predictable faces such as Madonna, Duran Duran and Prince, but it’s a marvellous jukebox of a much loved era. Nostalgia heaven it may be, but there are also occasional curveballs pitched to modern eyes, mine at least, such as The Monroes' Sunday People and Jean-Baptiste Mondino's La Danse des Mots.

Sky-Fi Music only lasted for several months when, in January 1985, it was renamed Sky Trax. The spaceship set remained until 1987 when it was replaced by a more generic set, one which didn’t hold a candle to it's earliest guise. But Sky Trax would run until 1989 and is remembered much more clearly by those early Sky subscribers. Sadly, as with most of Sky’s early output, little remains of Sky-Fi Music beyond fuzzy YouTube uploads rescued from dusty VHS tapes. I've included a few clips here, which I unearthed several years ago - if you happen to have any more footage, please get in touch.

To describe Sky-Fi Music as a mere time capsule would be ludicrously remiss. While, yes, it is a time capsule, it’s also the spark which ignited the sprawling, multichannel empire now known as British broadcasting. Tony Blackburn reading out letters from Scandinavian viewers or Tom Robinson inspecting a synthesiser is far from culturally relevant, but these are the baby steps for something much bigger.