History

• Using Clarke's theory as a guide in 1957, Russia launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite to orbit the Earth. Satellite broadcasting progressed further when in 1963, a U.S. Navy ship in Nigeria's harbor and a naval station in Lakehurst, N.J., used the first communications satellite (Syncom II) as a means to stay in touch.
  
  

Features

• A satellite dish
  
  In 1976, Stanford University Professor and former NASA scientist Emeritus H. Taylor Howard created the first consumer Direct To Home (DTH) Satellite System. The large dish-shaped antenna picked up programs from overhead satellites, and in March 1978, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) launched the Public Television Satellite System. At this point, thanks to Television Receive Only (TVRO), almost anyone--including rural-area residents who previously could not receive this kind of programming with standard methods--could receive satellite signals.
  
  

Regulations

• Satellite providers initially failed to get Federal Communications Commission (FCC) support in controlling users' ability to receive free signals. The "open skies' policy" granted users and broadcasters equal rights, in receiving satellite signals or transmitting them. However, in 1980, the FCC established Direct Broadcast Satellites (DBS), which rotated around the earth in geostationary orbit. Consumers had to possess a DTH system and decoder to receive signals and unscramble encrypted ones. Four years later, the 1984 Cable Act granted cable programming providers the right to encrypt their satellite feeds.
  
  

Effects

• Japan and Hong Kong were the first to launch satellites for the mass consumer market in 1986 and 1990, with the United States' first DBS company--the now-defunct Primestar--following shortly thereafter. Ushering in the small digital satellite dish TV era, other U.S. companies such as DirecTV and the DISH Network provided competition, with low-pricing battles benefiting consumers.
  
  

Famous Ties

• During satellite television's early stages, some key innovators to relay their signal via satellite included non-terrestrial television network Home Box Office (HBO), Ted Turner and Pat Robertson, who uplinked Atlanta UHF station WTBS and the Christian Broadcasting Network (now ABC Family Channel), respectively.