Television
In 1982, W H Smith bought a significant minority stake in the ITV company Yorkshire Television, following changes in the latter's share structure and ownership.
It also founded two of the UK's earliest cable television channels, Lifestyle and Screensport through its WHSTV division, which were carried on almost every cable system in the UK and Ireland prior to the start of Sky Television. Both channels moved to the Astra 1A satellite used by Sky in 1989 and later floundered due to the increased cable competition. Screensport merged with Eurosport at its relaunch as part of the TF1 Group, a group, formed after TF1 was privatised in 1987, and Lifestyle was closed down.
Their current television advertising campaign features well known TV personalities doing voice overs for products on sale. The Ads strap line is "Think (e.g. books) ... Think WH Smith".
Read more about this topic: W H Smith
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Photographs may be more memorable than moving images because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Television is a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labour in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.”
—Frederic Raphael (b. 1931)