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

Ah, yes! Satellite TV week! That was a handy guide. It's all coming back to me T301 and 302, G4. I remember one of them going down (this was before the 1998 outage) and a lot of feeds moving..some which normally were scrambled weren't. We could pick up a French language station from Montreal which mostly ran American shows and movies dubbed into French. There's nothing like watching The Blues Brothers and the Adam West "Batman" in French (le Pow?). There was also something called the Las Vegas Television Network that launched. Daytime and evenings had everything from interviews with Las Vegas stars of the past to a kids show..and overnights were soft porn.

Interesting times.
 
CBFT-2 Montreal was on Anik E2 UNSCRAMBLED. Along with a couple dozen Canadian FMs/AMs. Suspect this is why CFMI 101.1 Vancouver has a translator in Burgeo, NEWFOUNDLAND of all places! VF2076 is on 92.3 in Burgeo, they must have used the Anik feed to relay CFMI.
 
Those having the big dishes I can remember many people trying to outlaw them hell even the early days of Direct TV. I got Direct TV in early 1998 and even I found myself in the wrath of angry neighbors. "You can't have a dish inside city limits" was one line I heard much too often. "Adelphia Cable has the exclusive rights to television here" was another one I can remember. Anyway I held my ground and continued to have Direct TV. Over time I did noticed many folks on the block switching to dish.. I wonder if any had issues with nosy neighbors because they had a dish ??
 
hamster said:
Those having the big dishes I can remember many people trying to outlaw them hell even the early days of Direct TV. I got Direct TV in early 1998 and even I found myself in the wrath of angry neighbors. "You can't have a dish inside city limits" was one line I heard much too often. "Adelphia Cable has the exclusive rights to television here" was another one I can remember. Anyway I held my ground and continued to have Direct TV. Over time I did noticed many folks on the block switching to dish.. I wonder if any had issues with nosy neighbors because they had a dish ??
Click to expand...

They never said that to us for a long time...until 1993, because we only had a antenna, and sometimes the stations didn't come in clearly.
 
My apartment complex "bans" satellite dishes but I still see a unit or two with a Dish or DirecTV system. One has it on a mounted stake in the walkway between the kitchen door and the public backyard (a first-floor apartment).
Not surprised people tried to outlaw C-Band dishes. A 10-foot dish would be an eyesore for many.
 
I remember my great-grandma had C-Band when I was young (before she passed, she switched to Dish Network). I remember G5 containing a lot of the most popular networks, the Denver Six on F1 (watched a football game on KCNC once), and watching CMT (F4-24) and The Weather Channel (F3-13). Surprisingly, she never subscribed to Foxnet despite the local FOX affiliate being very weak where she was.

She also had a very old yagi antenna that was fix-aimed east (the Big Four and PBS were all in that general direction).
 
I remember seeing people getting ready for live shots etc...

One time, i saw Bill Macatee, when he was in NBC's NFL studio in 1985, when Costas was doing baseball. You saw him get his microphone on etc before taping the pregame, then saw him get ready to update games as they were happening. Macatee was so classy, not even cussing. That showed me how classy he was.

I once saw Kristie Wilde of KNBC/4 getting ready to do a newscast once after a baseball game, most likely a playoff game too. Now that I'm thinking of it it was the ALCS, and late in the game, Pat Sheridan hit a homer to tie the game. What i was surprised about was that Kristie didn't cuss or anything like that. She just went about preparing to do the newscast, without knowing what was going on with the baseball game. I've seen anchors do that a lot when i had my dish. They aren't going to let a sporting event inferre with them preparing to do a newscast.
 
Yep, TWC was on F3, then C3, tp 13. Always with the scrolling Travel Cities Forecast and later national satellite radars, temperatures, etc. during the local on the '8s. The feed stayed on up to June 2014 in analog, for only one reason - because the analog feed provided information for the remaining WeatherStar 4000s and Jr's (the latter replaced 3000s). Once the feed went off, the 4000s stopped receiving data and cable operators were forced to get new Intellistar systems for their digital feed.
I would suspect there were many in the Yakima Valley, in areas where KIMA/KNDO/etc. were too weak or blocked by hills, who received the Denver Six on C-Band. Wenas Valley, Nile, Tampico, etc. I found a VHS tape at an estate sale last September with about three hours of KUSA-taped programming from March 1991 including an hour-long local newscast. Since the rest of the four-tape lot was Yakima content, I suspect they had the dish. But this was just miles from the TV transmitters, I don't know how they pulled off a subscription to the Denver Six.
 
About the Denver 6....the signal you picked up was it the same as if you were in Denver or was it a different feed ?? Today here in Denver it was brought up on the radio that local Denver TV had fans across the nation. While the host agreed was true he went on to say that the Denver 6 was a different feed all together meaning no Denver area TV commercials and restricted newscasts. I could have sworn not only did I see Nine News but an ad for Denver's Southwest Plaza too

I also remember Denver's KOA and KHOW being available on dish in those days and a third station.....KLZ ????
 
hamster said:
About the Denver 6....the signal you picked up was it the same as if you were in Denver or was it a different feed ?? Today here in Denver it was brought up on the radio that local Denver TV had fans across the nation. While the host agreed was true he went on to say that the Denver 6 was a different feed all together meaning no Denver area TV commercials and restricted newscasts. I could have sworn not only did I see Nine News but an ad for Denver's Southwest Plaza too

I also remember Denver's KOA and KHOW being available on dish in those days and a third station.....KLZ ????
Click to expand...

I seem remember seeing Denver ads durong Broncos games on KUSA/KCNC, but i can't remember if it was a regular thing.
 
stdjsb25 said:
ABC for many years, would time share one of their four Telstar 301 transponders (T302 on the West Coast) when the network was not active, for the News One service. ABC later established a dedicated transponder for News One. CBS did the same for their Newspath service.

NBC notably moved away from C-Band service to Ku-Band in the early 1980s when they launched their Skypath service. NBC maintained one dedicated C-Band feed on Satcom 1R for many years for East Coast viewers.

Warner Bros. inherited a Telstar 301 slot from Lorimar/Telepictures following their merger in the late 1980s. LT had previously subleased time from WOLD/Keystone. Disney obtained a slot of their own in the mid 1990s through an arrangement with Keystone, after using Compact Video transponders for a few years. Another syndicator of note to have a dedicated transponder was Group W's "TVSC", which occupied two slots on Westar 5 for several years before moving over to T301.
Click to expand...

What was the TVSC that Group W used? i seem to remember it.
 
Westar 5, tp 18 I think. TVSC used that transponder for several years in the 1980s-early 1990s.
 
My father-in-law owned one on his property in rural Michigan.
I would play with it when we went to visit.

I remember in particular the backhaul feeds of Charles Kuralt interviewing people on CBS.
It was just his side of the feed. After asking the question (when the main feed would supposedly
cut away to the interviewee) he would sweat profusely, wipe his brow, snort, hack, pick his nose,
and do all other sorts of disgusting stuff.

An interesting window into the TV world for a guy who has never worked in it.
 
There used to be a special listings section in some of the C-band mags dedicated to backhauls and special feeds. Syndicated programs had a schedule of their own as to when they were sent down (up?) to their local station subscribers. They were analog and unscrambled for a long time back then and sometimes you could see a whole week's worth of a particular show in one viewing.

Also lots of fun was browsing the Ku band for location news feeds. A bit tougher to tune in compared to C band but entertaining at times. I learned there is a surprising amount of animosity between location reporters and their stations at times. Some of those pretty girls could cuss like a sailor.
 
Satellite TV Week had some programs listed on a "Recurring Feeds" section. I have the 9/21/86 edition right next to me, and a few programs listed were:
Donahue on W5-15, 9a/10a ET weekdays
Merv Griffin at 8p weeknights, T301-9 (Wold Communications)
PM Magazine at 9:10a weekdays, W5-18 (This was the Group W feed channel)
This Week in Baseball on T301-23, Thursday morning 1a ET and another feed at 8:15p ET. T301-23 was one of a few Wold Communications feed channels, another was T301-9.

PBS had three national feeds in 1986, Westar 4-15, 17 and 21. The schedules varied by time zone.
 
landtuna said:
There used to be a special listings section in some of the C-band mags dedicated to backhauls and special feeds. Syndicated programs had a schedule of their own as to when they were sent down (up?) to their local station subscribers. They were analog and unscrambled for a long time back then and sometimes you could see a whole week's worth of a particular show in one viewing.

Also lots of fun was browsing the Ku band for location news feeds. A bit tougher to tune in compared to C band but entertaining at times. I learned there is a surprising amount of animosity between location reporters and their stations at times. Some of those pretty girls could cuss like a sailor.
Click to expand...

Apparently a lot of the so-called religious people can cuss as well. My cousin used to watch the 700 Club feeds and I can remember him telling dirty jokes...jokes he got from Pat Robertson during the feeds.
 
landtuna said:
There used to be a special listings section in some of the C-band mags dedicated to backhauls and special feeds. Syndicated programs had a schedule of their own as to when they were sent down (up?) to their local station subscribers. They were analog and unscrambled for a long time back then and sometimes you could see a whole week's worth of a particular show in one viewing.

Also lots of fun was browsing the Ku band for location news feeds. A bit tougher to tune in compared to C band but entertaining at times. I learned there is a surprising amount of animosity between location reporters and their stations at times. Some of those pretty girls could cuss like a sailor.
Click to expand...

I could add some of the sportscasters too. Vin Scully once made comments that he wasn't proud of during a baseball game once on NBC, and Costas could be an idiot sometimes too.
Chick Hearn did that too sometimes on Lakers games. He'd get mad at Susan Strattion, the director sometimes.
 
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