Skyway Television

Skyway Television is the only commercially-operated television network in South Arlesbury. It is operated by the Central Newspapers Group (who previously operated Commercial Television between 1964 and 1980) and operates the main Skyway channel and Skyway News.

The broadcaster has been in the center of many controversies since 2007 and has been intensively censoring local and international content.

History

1998-2000

South Arlesbury was the last Western Eurectipherian country to allow commercially-operated television, in September 1996, according to government data. However, there already was a commercial service, Commercial Television, between 1964 and 1980. CTV was outright banned when Pro Tect became the country's president and plunged South Arlesbury into years of dictatorship.

Commercial radio was legalized in September 1990, when TNA and RNA were expelled from the SABC's control.

2000-2004

On June 30. 2000, Skyway started broadcasting its second channel, The TV, targeted at a younger audience than the main one.

2011-2018

In June of 2018, Skyway Television announced that it will become a news channel, having lost one of the licenses to TV3 from North Arlesbury, who launched Channel 4 on August 30th, 2018. As a result, Skyway sacrificed Skyway News to make up for it. As the new Channel 4 does not have the same editorial guidelines as Skyway, one of the channel's most common practices, censorship, seems to have dwindled. However the channel still censors certain content, including footage critical of the government.

2020-present

After Sexit and the rise of the New Social Order, who would become the runner-up of the 2020 legislative elections, the channel started taking cues from nationalist Sierran news networks like Newsmax and One Sierra News. The tone of the news has been perceived by the media as being "too jocular" because of its populist approach and constant screeching of its news hosts. The channel also started airing nationalist anti-foreign songs like "Kill the Northerner and the Kaiju", referring to the sour relations with North Arlesbury and Kaizhung, and "Get Out", a song about nationalism.

YouTube, due to recent changes to its policy, banned Skyway Television from its platform on October 9, 2020. The channel was restored a few days later but without any videos.

In October 2021, Skyway was fined NA£ 20,000 for the showing of content promoting the "killing of minorities from Eurectipheria" and the channel was stripped of its must-carry status on November 4. This comes after coverage of an attack in Nordland, that called for a killing of minorities and "protection of the Eurectipherian identity". An investigation started to see what far-right groups the members of Skyway were involved in.

Following the Alavian-Ugrainian war, and the subsequent ban of AT from Eurectipherian satellites, Skyway started carrying a low-quality stream from AT. After a few days the regulatory body cut the streams. The channel continued calling the war a "special military operation" and threatened South Arlesbury to side with Alavia. For a few days, the channel was branded as Zkyway and later ZkyVay. This was possible largely thanks to its purge from several social media platforms. In April the channel witnessed a massive fine of NA$250,000 because of violations to the media law, thinking that the pro-Alavian content would lead to a massive brainwash.

The regulatory agency also cut short a potential deal with the far-right platform The Daily Wire.

Censorship practices

General

Since 2007, Skyway Television has been practicing "violent acts of censorship and manipulation", either on the news or on entertainment programming. Sensitive images are often censored from the entirety of the channel's programming except for rare mistakes where the channel hasn't edited the thing completely. Certain words are also censored, as if they were swear words. Words like "hell", "damn", "gay", even "curse" have been treated by Skyway Television as "strong language" even though the "language" is considered "mild". Also, faces of fictional characters have been censored through mock claims that the characters are real people and not actors.

This however resulted in massive backlash from local and international viewers of the channel, who realized that "watching Skyway was like watching an Arabic television channel".

The reason why most of these practices are committed is because the channel's current president, Charles Taylor, wanted that Skyway Television would be "family-friendly" despite even achieving the opposite. The channel has been the target of countless memes regarding these practices, often accompanied by the phrase "Skyway sucks big time".

Despite hundreds of calls to stop the channel's incessant censorship, nothing has emerged.

The Curse of Charles Emmanuel

Skyway was also in the center of a controversy against the SABC news presenter Charles Emmanuel, to an extent that all references of the word "Emmanuel" had to be censored from the channel. This resulted in the first period of news fasting.

Fake news

In 2012, Skyway faked the existence of the North Arlesburian series Protective Retaliation which aired on (and was co-produced with) the SABC.

North Arlesburian-led boycotts

Skyway has banned reports critical of North Arlesburian boycotts