Green

"In November 1987, Jarvis and Heatley were pleasantly surprised to discover that while the Sky name was being used for pay TV overseas, no one had trademarked the name in New Zealand so they registered their new company as Sky Media. In February 1989, it was changed to Sky Network Television Ltd. Jarvis and Heatley were the original investors with Heatley, who had more financial resources, gradually increasing his share as the costs mounted. Green, who had a mortgage and young family, was not a shareholding investor but nonetheless committed by ‘taking a leap in the dark’ and leaving his secure job in a small manufacturing company to join Heatley and Jarvis. He had the technical understanding they needed and says he was promised they would see him right in the future. He feels disappointed, though not bitter, that in his view those promises were never made good."

"The regulation that first confronted Heatley, Jarvis and Green was daunting. Just to try to replicate the Australian situation of showing live racing in pubs meant first penetrating a dense thicket of bureaucracy and government-mandated monopoly. Technically, putting a satellite dish in a pub car park was not difficult. Nor was leasing transponder space—there was a satellite with a transponder capable of rebroadcasting from Australia to New Zealand, which potentially allowed Australian horse racing to be shown live across the Tasman. Jarvis had already talked with Kerry Packer’s Channel Nine about getting access to its racing channel’s content. But even if you owned your own pub—owned the land, owned the buildings—and bought your own satellite dish, paid yourself to have it installed and paid for the satellite space to receive the signal and the coverage, you would still need a licence from Telecom to set up the dishes and allow the telecommunications to go ahead."

"But Heatley needed something new. Brierley’s had offered him the role of heading their North American operations but working in a market in which he had no contacts held no appeal for him. While they never said it, he had the sense that Brierley’s had been disappointed by his decision not to go. Maybe it would have suited them to have him out of the way, he thought. Nothing else that interested him seemed on offer. Telecommunications and broadcasting were fields about which he knew nothing but gradually, and with full disclosure to Brierley’s, he started working on the project with Jarvis and Green. By late 1988, after about a year on the BIL board, the new project was requiring all his attention and he resigned from Brierley’s. He sold all his shares in the company, making a loss on much of the stock because he had bought at $3 after the crash, thinking it was a good buy, and was selling at $2–$2.40. But as the price gradually sank to 50–60c, he was simply relieved to have got out when he did. Now he was free, cashed up and keen for a new venture."

"With a staff of 200, all being paid out of shareholders’ funds and bank loans, Sky finally went to air on 18 May 1990. Initially, only Auckland could receive the new service though by August, Waikato and Tauranga households could get it too, and by the end of the year it was available in most of the North Island. For Heatley the launch meant relief rather than euphoria. He, Jarvis and Green had achieved a huge amount. They had done what they had set out to do. They had built a TV network from scratch offering international channels and up-to-date choices that New Zealanders had never before had, but pre-launch subscriber sales had not matched predictions and the drain on shareholder funds was unabated. By the time of the launch Heatley’s shareholding was about 40 per cent of the company and Jarvis’s was 14 per cent, reflecting how much of his own money Heatley had had to put in. TVNZ had about 25 per cent, Gibbs and Farmer’s investment company Tappenden had about 18 per cent and ESPN’s shareholding had been diluted to 1 per cent."