This month brings significant anniversaries for Sky News and Charles Darwin, but they have much more in common than that, as the head of Sky News, John Ryley, explains:
Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. This month - last Thursday
Darwin and Sky have got a couple of important things in common. They both successfully challenged an overbearing establishment. As well as that, over two decades of research, the naturalist worked out that if you don't innovate, you die. And throughout Sky's 20-year history, the need to innovate has been critical to our success.
Think back to the 1970s and 1980s. Whichever medium you favoured - papers, radio or television - you had no choice whatsoever. You had to wait for your news to arrive at the convenience of the broadcaster.
The relationship between news provider and news consumer was unequal, almost feudal. It was not a golden age for either television news or democracy itself.
Sky News successfully challenged the tyranny of the status quo by offering viewers a genuine choice. We set out to shake up the cosy duopoly of BBC and ITN and have been pioneers in the world of television ever since, changing the very way news is reported.
On the BBC and ITV, live news coverage was mostly confined to seeing the British Establishment at work…party conferences, elections and budgets.
They were large, expensive, outside broadcasts involving tons of equipment and an army of people; with huge staff numbers partly a consequence of the unions' grip on the industry.
Rupert Murdoch had just emerged victorious from the bitter Wapping dispute, in which he defeated trade union opposition to his newspaper modernisation plans. Most national papers were now following the Murdoch lead and switching from hot metal printing to the new offset litho method. It was a step forward almost as profound as the creation of the printing press itself.
Now it was television's turn to be shaken up.
The channel first slogan was: 'We're there when you need us'. It deliberately had the sound of the upstart…and emphasised that difference from the terrestrial channels with their news bulletins fixed in concrete. We would always be on.
At long last, viewers would not have to wait for the news. Without the time constraints of the terrestrials, Sky could fulfil the viewing public's hunger for every detail of a big story. We were the one setting the pace...and the 24 hour news cycle had begun.
On the day of the London bombing, July 7 2005, the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, the man responsible that Thursday for the capital's safety said "we switched on Sky, as everybody does, to try to get some idea of what was going on."
That dreadful day was also a turning point for BBC News. BBC bosses have admitted they rewrote their policy after seeing our handling of the terrorists' attack.
News does not usually break cleanly. Big stories emerge in dribs and drabs, bits of information from many sources - often conflicting and confusing.
At Sky News we specialise in drawing together all these strands to try to make sense of them - as they happen. We have always believed in taking the audience into our confidence and sharing facts as soon as possible.
That means that when a big news story is unfolding, we report new information, clearly attributed to its source, even if subsequently things turn out differently. We make no apology for this policy.
Indeed the BBC decided to adopt the same policy after the London bombings. Their own audience research showed that the typical viewer of 24-hour news trusted us more than they trusted BBC News 24 which chose not to broadcast information - including growing evidence that the explosions were caused by bombs - until it had been officially confirmed.
Our ambition is do for all news in the future what we have done for TV news in the past. We are now a multi media news organisation delivering non-stop news to TV, online, radio and digital - out of home - media screens. These adverse and uncertain times play to what we are best at: adapting, innovating and growing.
As the naturalist Charles Darwin said, 'It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change'.