Living TV Group

Living TV Group was a British television consortium originally called Flextech before becoming a subsidiary of British Sky Broadcasting, with Challenge still broadcasting. Living TV Group had several owned channels, available in the United Kingdom on Digital territorial television, satellite television and cable television platforms and in Ireland on satellite and cable television. Living TV Group's advertising was handled by former sister company Interactive Digital Sales (IDS) until 1 January 2011, when Sky Media took over. Flextech began life as an oil services group, previously floated as an energy investment company back in 1983. After Roger Luard became chief executive in 1986, the company shifted focus into the media industry. Its first media acquisition was in 1990 with a 20% stake in programme producer/distributor HIT Communications; by October of that year, they had acquired a stake in The Children's Channel, when it bought a 25% holding in Starstream Ltd. (TCC's parent company) from BT. By 1992, Flextech was a media-only group, having built up stakes in local cable operators by way of selling off its non-core assets. During the summer of 1993, Flextech entered into an agreement with International Family Entertainment (IFE), to launch a UK version of IFE's flagship property, The Family Channel (Flextech holding a 39% stake in the venture). IFE had recently purchased much of the assets of the then-recently defunct TVS Entertainment, including most of TVS' library of shows (which would form large parts of the Family Channel's schedule) and The Maidstone Studios, which became the main operational base for The Family Channel; this was a boon to Flextech, as the facility handled the channel's uplink, playout and management operations. In the autumn, talks were held with the US-based cable/media company Tele-Communications Inc. Under the original terms of the proposed deal, Flextech would have acquired TCI's European programming business (United Artists European Holdings, having been inherited by TCI via the purchase of United Artists Theaters' cable television business) in exchange for shares in TCI.