The History of Satellite TV

The technology that streams content from around the globe into television sets in rural America originated in Russia in the late 1950s. From its beginnings as part of the space race during the Cold War satellite TV has evolved into one of the dominant broadcast vehicles of the twenty first century. Along the way satellite television has been a populist medium that brought TV to the United States heartland, bumped up against the FCC and finally landed on the roofs of multiple millions of American homes.

According to NASA satellite TV was born with Russia’s launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. The United States was surprised and aghast that Russia had beaten it to the space punch. As a result, in July of 1958 the National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed which in turn spawned the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA itself credits the orbit of Sputnik as the driving force behind the competition that developed satellite technology.

It would take five years though before the first communications satellite beamed its signal to earth. In early July 1962 the privately developed and owned Telstar satellite was catapulted into space aboard a NASA Delta rocket. Two weeks later on July 24 the world’s first live transatlantic broadcast hit the airwaves: A short segment of a baseball game from Wrigley Field. Still, it would be almost twenty years before satellite TV would provide even a nascent system for mass television broadcasts.

In the mid seventies HBO would be the first content developer to use satellites to deliver its product to cable television systems. As the number of content producers sending their programming via satellites proliferated, an enterprising Stanford academician devised a way to funnel bouncing signals into his TV via an enormous satellite dish. As Keith Urban recounts it HBO turned down the professor’s offer of payment which prompted the gentleman to begin selling instructions for making the dishes by that time referred to as C band home satellite receivers. Initially C band satellite dishes retailed for around ten thousand dollars. The signal these dishes received was dubbed television receive only (TVRO). This era of consumer satellite television flourished for several years. Many middle American communities that had never known multi channel reception jumped feet first into the world of modern TV when oversize C band dishes were installed in their backyards.

Of course, it didn’t take long for HBO to realize that not accepting payment for its service had been somewhat of a miscalculation. In 1986 HBO encrypted its service and a new chapter of satellite TV history was opened. For a few years the satellite TV industry stagnated as many users moved to cable. The early 1990s though saw another upgrade in technology that led to a renaissance in satellite TV reception: Videocypher decoders. By coupling decoder boxes with encrypted signals direct broadcast satellite (DBS) networks gained a foothold on the television terrain. Before too long DBS systems were battling head to head with cable systems and the giant C band dishes were mostly relegated to history.

So, from pride injured by the preemptive launch of a foreign satellite came the storm of activity that would create satellite TV. A circuitous route through a professor’s living room would give rise to the dish technology that created an entire commercial television industry. Only late in the game would content producers recognize the golden egg in their nest and rush to save the satellite TV goose that laid it by encrypting the satellite signal. Some half dozen years later decoder boxes would free that encrypted signal for transmission to the small dish system that forms the backbone of today’s satellite TV.

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