SkyNews is a popular channel in the UK that used to broadcast an international version over its YouTube channel to the world, that is until recently.
About The Block
The channel was IP blocked to a number of countries including South Africa, Cyprus, here in Canada and many more. It isn’t blocked for countries like the USA, India and others.
There are many Expats who watch SkyNews around the globe who are very upset about the block, according to what they are saying on Twitter. Despite reaching out on SkyNews on Twitter none had received a response, so I decided to have a go.
It was labour intensive to communicate with SkyTV to try and find out the reason for this. After a few tweets back and forth they finally gave me an email address to write to. I received a response fairly quickly but they didn’t really shed any light on the block and didn’t know which countries were affected and why. SkyNews in Australia was recently temporarily banned from YouTube for a while due to relaying fake news, so I am guessing SkyNew UK might have been hit by a similar reason.
I understand some have just started viewing SkyNews on YouTube via a VPN.
Alternatives
There are many live news broadcast channels on YouTube that can be viewed as an alternative. Note, some of these might not be available at your location, they are all available in Canada though.
- France24 – I have to say this is one of my favourites
- DW – from Germany
- Al Jazeera – A Qatar government channel
- ABC News Live – from the US
- MSNBC Now Live – from the US
- BBC World News – this would be available through your cable provider, not through YouTube
- EuroNews – this might be available through your cable provider, a great channel
- GB News – from the UK, I don’t watch this channel, too right-wing, but an odd interesting snippet now and again.
Summary
It’s always good to view the news from different perspectives especially when a war is ongoing so hopefully, the above channels are helpful. It is disappointing that SkyNews take down this service at this time.