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Has anyone here on this forum own a C-band dish? Tell your memories here!

Scott2011 said:
It took me a while to figure out where that was coming from, but after I looked up more information on C-band satellites and wildfeeds, apparently the C-band receptions are where the local stations get their syndicated programs from, along with the nationally broadcast commercials and program bumpers that come with them.
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Yup. Before the switch to C-band digital you could find downloads of virtually any first run or syndicated TV program (called 'backhauls'). Some would have national commercials inside and other wouldn't. For a number of years it was my "poor man's DVR". The backhauls had a regular schedule so it made intercepting them easy. C-band was the place for NCAA football and in the very early days, NFL as well. The signals are still there if you have a commercial-grade digital receiver. Hardly worth the effort any longer though.
 
There are MANY channels left on C-Band. For the most complete listing, go HERE. (Since this thread was resurrected from almost a year ago, I don't remember if this site was posted or not.)

Dig around on the site for worldwide C and Ku band listings. ;)
 
trusty said:
There are MANY channels left on C-Band. For the most complete listing, go HERE.
Click to expand...

I see one of the available channels is from Akron (WAOH-LP Channel 29, RTV). I personally think that station was a lot more worth watching before the days of RTV though.

I also saw WGGN Channel 52 in Sandusky (independent religious station) in that lineup.
 
Stanislav said:
Never owned a BUD, but knew a couple guys who did over the years...

One of the most fun aspects of those things was seeing things not meant for broadcast. If you tuned into a live news remote, chances are the feed was hot on a constant basis, even though the reporter might only be actually doing brief reports every few minutes. In-between, you could see what was happening in the background, hear the techies and talent discussing things (both related to the live shot and, more often, not) or, if you were lucky, catch a vain reporter having a hissy fit over something. This held for both local and network news shows; one dish owner told me that he had seen live feeds of quite a few Jane Pauley remotes during Today, and said that while she was all sweetness and light on-air, she was quite the potty-mouthed bi*ch when off...

Likewise the live feeds of things like The Tonight Show. As the show was fed live to NY for taping, the commercials had not yet been added, so whenever Johnny said "we'll be right back," viewers of the not-for-broadcast feed got to watch the activity in the studio during the "break." It's said that Carson often did "bluer" material for the studio audience during those breaks that he could not have done on the air. I've also heard that, eventually, Johnny caught on to the fact that there were some dish owners who were watching the live feed of the show, and would jokingly reference them in the breaks.

Similarly, backfeeds of live sporting events such as football games had hot cams and mikes during what normal viewers saw as commercial breaks (the spots being fed from the network, not from the remote unit at whatever stadium the game was being played). At first, the announcers were oblivious to the fact that a handful of "normal" people were able to listen in, and there were quite a few incidents of announcers saying dirty or embarrassing things during the breaks. Then the networks got wise and muted the audio on the live feed during the breaks, spoiling the fun. :(
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Come to think of it, I wonder if the infamous Inside Edition clip of Bill O'Reilly's meltdown was publicized as a result of a C-band feed. I'm wondering if that's how that clip originally got leaked to the general public and later onto the Internet.
 
It's been a while, but someone posted probably 45 min to an hour of raw C-Band channel surfing from August of 1991.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIKa0ytxBsg - This clip is part 1, and at first has 7-8 minutes of a Jeopardy! Creative Services Satellite Reel - used for local stations with promos, "think music" samples, etc. Alex Trebek appears on camera around 6:00 in. There are also some Geraldo promos (audio-only?), the Warner Bros. TV color bars on T301 Ch. 2, and samples of "weak" C-Band signals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIKa0ytxBsg - Part 2. Mostly has Canadian samples (probably surfed around the Anik F1 satellite). There is also an unknown sports program ending at the end of Part 2 with a producer "Jennon Productions"? Who could help me out here?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGLZ9HEFMaE - Part 3. At the beginning there is a news anchor messing up her lines, staring into the camera, etc. Some religious channels and a "Arizona Department of Education" color bar follow. There is also a weak snippet of some talk show around 10:30 (is that the short-lived "My Talk Show" - syndicated?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm-19Mkta2s - Part 4. A French program at the beginning, and then at the end, there is a Chinese anchor fixing up his mic for several minutes! Funny to see!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adKMVxjTiLo - Part 5. More of the Chinese anchor, and then snippets of the Weather Network (Canada) in French!

Classic C-Band action!

-crainbebo
 
I also had a c-band dish from aug of 1995 till somewhere in the year 2005.

I was never into football, but I looked at the various feeds set up at universities every Saturday. By 10 or 11 am eastern time I could see the switcher (TD) switching between all of the cameras that would be focused on people arriving, the marching band practicing, the teams going through exercise drills and so on.

There was one game on a Saturday morning (High School, I think) from a field that was not your usual college stadium. The stands were only on the side where the cameras were set up 'cause on the other side was a fence and then beyond that a city street.

My favorite Superstaion was KTLA Los Angeles. There was only one or two prefeeds I was interested in, so I tape delayed those and fast forwarded through local and network commercials.

One night I was looking for news feeds and the unusual and I caught a picture of a state highway and a parking lot. The camera was panning back and forth and then settled on a business sign. The business had a phone number on it and the guy started getting telephone calls. He had installed some piece of equipment in an uplink truck and was testing it out after hours.

He had a microphone open so you could hear him answering the phone from BUD owners who had caught the phone number.

The most memorable newsfeed was on the night of Bill Clinton's second inauguration. A network reporter was standing out in the cold dark night waiting to go on. He was telling a joke to his co-workers and they all enjoyed it. Then, he added that he hoped all of the people with dishes in their backyards had also enjoyed the joke.

One network had an interesting feed for the evening news. There was the regular feed, but on another channel a few numbers down was another feed of the studio camera that was focused on the anchor. While in a commercial break or while a prepared story piece was playing the anchor was going through the script and mentioning an error that should have been told a different way. The tone of his voice indicated his displeasure with the person who had gotten it wrong.

Of course, the BUD (big USEFUL dish) was good when it came to the TWA800 tragedy. One network bird had several transponders lit up with reporters in various places, but also a live feed from a helicopter circling the spot in the ocean where there were burning debris.

That's all I can remember for now. And, yes this is classic television!
 
Great stories Mike! I found out the unknown "Jennon Productions" program in Part 2 - it is the ending credits to the sports show "Roggin's Heroes", produced by Jennon and MCA Television, and hosted by LA sports anchor Fred Roggin. The feed was on Westar 5/18 (Group W feed channel).

More to add
Part 2 of the videos I posted to the thread - around 3:00, you can see some type of wildfeed from Global TV in Canada. They were rewinding some news tapes of a story about BCH-189 (Lamivudine), used for Hepatitis B treatment. Very interesting!
Part 1-around 11:25 there is a test pattern for "Cycle Sat" ready for the next feed, a Burger King commercial! Did they actually feed commercials on C-Band to local stations to use?

Sure wish you had some tapes full of these wildfeeds Mike!

-crainbebo
 
You aren't the only one to wish I had tape rolling for some of the stuff I watched. I wished that, also.

Commercials fed up satellite? I doubt that, but I have no direct knowledge of that.

I caught a couple of those feeds where a celebrity would be interviewed by different stations around the country because of some event. A famous celebrity and his wife (former or then current I don't remember) did this for a TV talk show they would be doing. It was fun to watch for awhile, but it got old after hearing one or two jokes repeated for each station.

On another occasion, I happened upon a feed where they only had a half-hour of satellite time and they had to feed a report that had been taped ahead of time. Well, the entire half-hour was filled with two people trying to get their playback machine to playback that report. You could hear them talking, but nothing was happening. Finally, with about five minutes left in their window, a third person was saying they'd have to book another chunk of time and try again later. I'm glad somebody had deep pockets to book a half-hour where nothing happened!

Those are about the only highpoints that I can remember from my time scanning the skies. The rest was pretty mundane ordinary stuff.

About the only thing I taped and saved were parts of the KTLA Morning News and the station's anniversary programs. With the tapes getting bad with time I have to find time to make DVD copies, or else my memories and the shows on tape will fade away forever.
 
Had another memory.

On a live shot a woman reporter was getting ready for her report. She was wearing a jacket over a white sweater.

The cameraman said he had to do a white balance so she said okay and opened her jacket while the cameraman zoomed in on her sweater. She wasn't showing off any cleavage or had a great body, she just had a white sweater on.

My college age daughter was watching this with me at the time and I told her the cameraman wasn't a dirty old man (at least at work) he just had to go through a standard procedure.
 
Anyone remember a 20/20 news story from 1984/85 about people who own C-band dishes? i remember they showed a clip (on 20/20) of a rehearsal that was sent out over the dish for Election night 1984 where some studio staff filled in for the people they would interview a couple of nights later. (it should be noted that Mondale did better in rehearsal than on election night.)
 
The only news story I remember was on NBC and showed how people in rural America depended on the Big Useful Dish to get their TV. I think the family they visited was in Texas, and showed them enjoying TV they wouldn't get to see otherwise. I'm not sure what year that was, but it was before I bought a dish.
 
When I lived in Mississippi, my relatives a few blocks away had a C-Band dish, and I would play around with it most of the time. On one occasion, I caught an advance feed of "Hi Honey, I'm Home" in progress...which was followed by a promo feed for the new season of "Monday Night Football"!! This was on one of ABC's feeds, though Viacom at the time didn't have their own transponder. I also remember seeing Fun House and Alvin and the Chipmunks back-to-back on Warner Bros.' feed.

By the way...who fed the syndicated runs of Double Dare, Finders Keepers, and Remote Control for them? My guesses would be Compact Video, Keystone Communications, or Group W.
 
I can't answer your question, but with the recent Publisher's Clearing House commercials I remembered another hidden gem.

Back when PCH would surprise somebody at their house during the commercial break on NBC Nightly News, I happened across the satellite feed for this event. The surprise had already taken place, so what I saw was a camera crew and the check presenters on the sidewalk in front of a house about 30 or 40 feet away and an announcer in the foreground standing by to start the commercial. I saw about ten or fifteen minutes of everybody standing by but I didn't wait for the commercial to take place "live."
 
As a TV-loving child and teenager (who grew into a TV-loving adult, obviously).....more than anything I wanted a C-band dish. I would be totally fascinated when I'd go over a friend's house and they would have one. The wild feeds fascinated me most. Well, unfortunately, we never got one....We came alarmingly close in the winter of '91....We went to a salesman's house and he showed us one, and we all but had an installation date nailed down....Until a guy my dad worked with told him in the winter, they freeze up and can't turn.......At that point, the sale was off :(

We did later get DISH Network and I have had DirecTV a few times as an adult...
 
Mike said:
I can't answer your question, but with the recent Publisher's Clearing House commercials I remembered another hidden gem.

Back when PCH would surprise somebody at their house during the commercial break on NBC Nightly News, I happened across the satellite feed for this event. The surprise had already taken place, so what I saw was a camera crew and the check presenters on the sidewalk in front of a house about 30 or 40 feet away and an announcer in the foreground standing by to start the commercial. I saw about ten or fifteen minutes of everybody standing by but I didn't wait for the commercial to take place "live."
Click to expand...

Publisher's Clearing House even went as far as surprising the $10 million winner LIVE after the Super Bowl in the mid-'90s!
 
harrisburgpatv said:
Until a guy my dad worked with told him in the winter, they freeze up and can't turn.......At that point, the sale was off :(
Click to expand...

I lived in snow country two winters with a BUD but never had a problem with it not turning. The only way it would ice up was if you didn't have a cover over the jacking arm and water got in and froze. Pretty simple to keep it covered with a rubber boot. I did have to go out and sweep the snow off the mesh a time or two because heavy snow would kill the signal and heavy, wet snow would tend to move the dish off-signal.
 
1988 winter olympics i saw a lot of feeds from abc on Telstar 301 and 302 and ctv on Anik D2
 
Wild feeds and backhauls were most entertaining. In the early days we could catch Carson beaming his Tonight Show back to Noo Yawk and the cameras would just run hot the whole time. Once Noo Yawk had the tape they would insert commercials and feed it back to the outlets. His show was many times more entertaining with the hot feeds than it was when cleaned up for broadcast.

Same held true for NCAA and NFL games. You could catch a backhaul, usually on Ku instead of C-band, and again the mics and cameras would run hot from the opening through the closing. On more than one occasion the announce pair would wind up in a bad argument when a commercial was playing and have to straighten it out quickly when back online.
 
Al Michaels, in his heyday at ABC,had a reputation for being even more entertaining on satellite during commercial breaks than he was during games. He spent a lot of time during the 1987 World Series(Minnesota vs. St. Louis) ripping a Minneapolis sportswriter, Dan Lundegaard, who had earlier ripped Michaels for complaints Michaels made during Game 1 about the city, the hotel accommodations, and the Series matchup in general. When Michaels decided that his Game 2 between-innings comments would be nothing but Lundegaard-bashing, ABC cut the audio in the booth(at one point, afte a lengthy period of 'mute', the sound was restored, and then cut almost immediately, when Michaels called his target a 'jerk)'. Michaels did manage to call Lundegaard a 'scumbag', and imply that the sportswriter had to be on drugs to make such negative comments.
 
during the 1988 winter olympics when dan jasen fell i iremmeber that gary bender and eric heiden were really on jasen for falling during the break after that fall i guess they were upset because he did not win a medal remember also watching the Canadian coverage and they were upset too about that
 
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