Wasn't PBS the first network to distribute programming by satelite? What was the last network to distribute programming over phone lines?
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Programming via satelite
- Thread starter nomadcowatbk
- Start date
First terrestrial TV network. Cable networks started doing it in the 70s.
wrong forum
...PBS was the earliest all-satellite on TV, not long after Mutual did that on radio. Perhaps fittingly, corporate headquarters for both PBS and Mutual were in the Washington metro area at the time...
According to Timothy Green's 1972 book about television around the world, The Universal Eye, Soviet TV was the first to be transmitted nationally by satellite, beginning in 1967. However, as Green explains, the Molnya satellite used for TV distribution east of the Urals was not geosynchronous because a satellite fixed directly above the equator wouldn't have been able to cover nothern Siberia. Instead, Molnya came "swinging in over Siberia twice a day." Continues Green:
"[Molnya] is in range for about six hours at a time to relay the pictures from central television in Moscow. Each Orbita earth station tracks the satellite automatically as it passes by, catching the television pictures in huge dish areals thirty-six feet across."
According to Green, "The [Soviet] satellite network has also been expanded to embrace Mongolian Television in Ulan Bator, where an earth station opened up in 1970."
Green adds that, at the time of writing, Canada was expected to become the second nation to distribute TV via satellite:
"Operated by the Telesat Canada Corporation, it will have ten operational channels, of which three will be used exclusively by the CBC. Two of the channels will distribute English-language television programmes, the third will extend the coverage of the French network. The satellite will also extend the television network throghout the far north, bringing the Eskimos and miners living in those barren lands into the Canadian fold."
"[Molnya] is in range for about six hours at a time to relay the pictures from central television in Moscow. Each Orbita earth station tracks the satellite automatically as it passes by, catching the television pictures in huge dish areals thirty-six feet across."
According to Green, "The [Soviet] satellite network has also been expanded to embrace Mongolian Television in Ulan Bator, where an earth station opened up in 1970."
Green adds that, at the time of writing, Canada was expected to become the second nation to distribute TV via satellite:
"Operated by the Telesat Canada Corporation, it will have ten operational channels, of which three will be used exclusively by the CBC. Two of the channels will distribute English-language television programmes, the third will extend the coverage of the French network. The satellite will also extend the television network throghout the far north, bringing the Eskimos and miners living in those barren lands into the Canadian fold."
Green cites another example of (very limited) domestic TV distribution via satellite in the early 1970s: The Spanish network TVE used the Atlantic satellite "three times every day to transmit their own news programmes live to their regional station in the Canary Islands."
In 70s, Johnny Carson was fed from Burbank to 30 Rock via satellite unscrambled
...true, but I think the point of the original question was distribution from network to affiliates, not production point A to production point B. Even then, I would think that the satellite feeds between the BBC and NET for the July 1967 Our World special (on which The Beatles recorded the basic tracks for "All You Need is Love" on-camera) would still give Public TV a first; I don't think Carson's feeds from his visits to Burbank were satellited anywhere near that early...nomadcowatbk said:
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