The Birth of Satellite TV

The Birth of Satellite TV

In 1976, Home Box Office (HBO) made history by initiating satellite release of programming to cable with the newspaper boxing match know as “The Thriller From Manila”. Also in 1976, as a result of his private experiments with video broadcast from communications satellites, the first consumer Direct To Home (DTH) Satellite System was formed in a most unusual place – in the garage of Stanford University Professor and former NASA scientist Emeritus H. Taylor Howard. It was a great dish-shaped antenna that he used to pick up programs that cable TV content providers offered for giving out to their subscribers.

When Mr. Howard wrote a check for $100 to HBO to compensate for movies he had watched, the company returned his check, saying that it dealt only with large cable companies, not persons. Howard then published a how-to-do-it handbook on his system. Soon afterward, with automatic engineer Bob Taggart, he co-founded Chaparral Communications Inc. of San Jose to produce the parts for the structure that he continued to get better. Within six years, Chaparral became a $50 million company.

Back in 1977, Pat Robertson launched the first satellite-delivered basic cable service called the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), afterwards The Family Channel. Others followed outfit, such as Turner Broadcasting System (TBS). Also, there was the establishment of SPACE, the Society for Private and Commercial Earth Stations (the Satellite Television Industry Association, Inc.) and COMSAT/Satellite Television Corporation’s demand to build and work a Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) system. The satellite TV industry was growing!