Abstract
The history of the Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) in the United States from 1962 to 1984 involves a paradox. The year 1962 was the one in which the Communications Satellite Act was passed. By 1984 most of America’s first DBS license holders either had failed to establish viable domestic systems or had given up their direct broadcasting plans altogether. It also was the year in which the United States withdrew from UNESCO - then the most troublesome and perhaps also the most vulnerable of UN agencies opposing US foreign communication policy.
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Notes
Delbert D. Smith, Communication via Satellite: A Vision in Retrospect (Leyden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1976) p. 255.
For instance, in 1972 FCC commissioner Robert E. Lee argued in favor of this development in a series of public speeches. See ‘Lee Cites Need Now to Start Shaping Ground Rules for Direct Satellites’, in Broadcasting (27 August 1973) 38.
Following the Second World War, the US military initiated classified feasibility studies on the potential applications of earth-orbiting satellites. But largely due to the absence of clear research objectives, coordinated inter-agency planning and an overriding interest in ballistic missile developments, the only significant advancement made by the mid-1950s involved launch vehicles. As for the social implications of telesatellite technologies, the Rand Corporation in 1949 organized the first national conference on the subject. One conference conclusion was the assumption that ‘the paramount utility of a satellite probably resides in its potentialities as an instrument for the achievement of political/psychological goals,’ Delbert D. Smith, Communication via Satellite, pp. 18–19 and 29.
See excerpts from US Senate, Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, Staff Report, ‘The Background of United States Involvement,’ in Lloyd D. Musolf (ed.), Communications Satellites in Political Orbit (San Francisco: Chandler, 1968) p. 13.
Sputnik’s technological superiority was made most apparent by the fact that its mass was nine times greater than the proposed American satellite and its orbit reached twice the altitude of the NAS/DoD plan.
NASA was to become the largest and most active civilian space science research agency in the world, although all its research related to US defense would be the responsibility of the DoD. Other American responses to Sputnik are summarized in Heather Hudson, Communication Satellites: Their Development and Impact (New York: Free Press, 1990) pp. 14–15.
’National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958.’ Public Law 85–568, 85th Cong., 72 Stat. 426, 29 July 1958. See discussion in Smith, Communication via Satellite, pp. 41–60.
Ibid., p. 63.
Ibid., pp. 64–71.
Hudson, Communication Satellites, p. 17.
On 23 July 1962, the world’s first transatlantic television broadcast was conducted in public. The primary reason for this display of US technology was its assumed propaganda value for American science and innovation. See US Congress. House. Committee on Science and Astronautics. Hearings on ‘Commercial Communications Satellites.’ 87th Cong., 2nd sess., 18 September 1962, p. 153.
Hudson, Communication Satellites, p. 18.
According to Delbert Smith, ‘Hughes was ready to abandon its project in 1961 if NASA would not add its sponsorship’ - Smith, Communication via Satellite, p. 88.
US Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly. Hearings on ‘Antitrust Problems of the Space Satellite Communications System.’ 87th Cong., 2nd sess., 12 April 1962, pp. 412–17.
Pucket testimony in ibid.,p. 421.
Ibid., p. 425. Cost calculations were provided by the Program Manager of Syncom, C. Gordon Murphy, to another Congressional hearing held in 1962. In comparing the construction, launch, and ground-station investments required for a world-wide elliptical satellite system and a GSO system, Murphy’s ‘bottom line’ was that the former would cost approximately US $80 million annually and the latter would cost about $30 million. See House Hearings on ‘Commercial Communications Satellites,’ 1962, pp. 5–6.
Murphy in ibid.,p. 7.
Jeremy Tunstall, Communications Deregulation, The Unleashing of America’s Communications Industry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) p. 65.
Lawrence Lessing, ‘Cinderella in the Sky,’ Fortune, LXXVI (5) (October 1967) 196.
Eugene G. Fubini quoted in House Hearings on ‘Commercial Communications Satellites.’ 1962. p. 117.
Ibid., p. 116. Unlike cable and other terrestrial systems, per unit satellite transmission costs are not affected by distance. In other words, telesatellite transmission costs do not go up as the distance between communicators increases (and vice versa). Terrestrial telecommunication system costs thus are said to be distance-sensitive while non-terrestrial systems, in relative terms, are not.
G. Griffith Johnson testimony in ibid., pp. 141–2.
Rep. Hechler quoted in ibid., p. 141. Representatives at this hearing also raised questions concerning the propaganda implications of satellite television broadcasting. In reply to the prospect of a four-hour Fidel Castro speech being broadcast around the world, Hechler speculated that it ‘would probably do us more good than harm.’ With less humor, Rep. James G. Fulton responded by observing that ‘The question is who it does good to. The question there is whether the good or the bad is to the United States or to the poor countries of Africa and the unenlightened natives who might hear it’ - ibid., p. 150.
Robert Mayer Evans, Special Assistant to the Director of the US Information Agency, testimony in ibid., p. 153. In 1962, the USIA produced pamphlets, magazines, books, films and shortwave radio broadcasts promoting US space achievements. See p. 160.
Hudson. Communication Satellites. pp. 24–5.
Communications Satellite Act of 1962, 47 USC 704–44. This Act was passed eleven months after President Kennedy’s announcement that the United States would put a man on the moon by 1970. According to Kennedy advisor McGeorge Bundy, Comsat was conceived ‘for the purpose of taking and holding a position of leadership ... in the field of international commercial satellite service.’ Quoted in Herbert I. Schiller, Mass Communications and American Empire. 1 st edn, p. 131.
Robert S. Magnant, Domestic Satellite: An FCC Giant Step (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1977) p. 74.
Jeremy Tunstall, Communications Deregulation p. 66.
US Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Small Business. Subcommittee on Monopoly. Hearings on ‘Space Satellite Communications,’ 87th Cong., 1st sess., 2, 3, 4, 9, 10 and 11 August 1961, p. 52.
Dingman quoted in ibid., p. 251.
Michael E. Kinsley, Outer Space and Inner Sanctums: Government, Business, and Satellite Communication (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976) p. 10.
Senator Russell Long, speaking on 18 June 1962, quoted in ibid., p. 12.
Jonathan F. Galloway, The Politics and Technology of Satellite Communications (Toronto: Lexington Books, 1972) p. 90.
Hudson, (Communnication Satellites, p. 27.
US Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations ‘Hearings on the Communications Satellite Act of 1962,’ 87th Cong., 2nd sess., 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9 August 1962, p. 188.
Pastore quoted in Michael E. Kinsley, Outer Space and Inner Sanctums, p. 135.
Robert S. Magnant, Domestic Satellite, p. 64.
Hughes Aircraft, seeking prospective markets, originally approached ABC with the concept of a ‘national network in the sky’. See ibid., p. 91.
The reader will recall the assurances made by common carriers during the Congressional hearings preceding the Communications Satellite Act of 1962 that the legislation would provide Comsat with a monopoly over overseas telesatellite communications only.
Kinsley, Outer Space and Inner Sanctums. pp. 17–21.
PTTs are the dominant agents in most nation-state telecommunication systems. Controlling their own domestic cable-based networks, PTTs today not only manage most distribution activities but together constitute the world’s largest equipment market and control most available telecommunication research and development funds. European governments generally have taken somewhat uncoordinated and/or reluctant steps to privatize PTT activities.
While US officials had originally envisioned that Comsat would establish bilateral communication agreements with foreign nation states, European countries - through their formation of the European Conference of Posts and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) in 1962 (partly in response to Comsat) - instead pushed for the formation of Intelsat. The Soviet Union rejected participation largely because of the prospect of American dominance. See Hudson, Communication Satellites. pp. 28–32.
Dan Schiller, Telematics and Government (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1982) p. 171. This interest in ending the dominance of mostly British-owned transoceanic cable systems also was a long-stated goal of US public sector officials. In 1945, James Lawrence Fly (Chairman of the FCC), referring to the United Kingdom’s ownership of much of the world’s cables (and thus its control over their use), stated that ‘[a]mong the artificial restraints to the free development of commerce throughout the world none is more irksome and less justifiable than the control of communication facilities by one country’. Quoted in Herbert I. Schiller, ‘Genesis of the Free Flow of Information Principles’ in A. Mattelart and S. Seigelaub (eds), Communication and Class Struggle, Vol. 1 (New York: International General, 1979) p. 346.
See US Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements. Hearings on ‘Modern Communications and Foreign Policy.’ 90th Cong., 1st sess., 8 and 9 February 1967.
Wilson P. Dizard, Office of Policy and Research, US Infonmation Agency, quoted in ibid., p. 67.
Tunstall, Communications Deregulation, pp. 64–5.
Sarnoff quoted in Lessing, ‘Cinderella in the Sky,’ p. 196.
Lessing,’Cinderella in the Sky,’ p. 196.
Ibid., p. 198.
The main reason why this conversion is necessary involves the immediate proximity of the satellite’s receiving and transmitting antennas. In many systems, the reception and the transmission units are one and the same. By using different frequencies, interference between the reception signal and the transmission signal can be minimalized. See D.J. Flint, ‘Satellite Transponders’ in B.G. Evans (ed.), Satellite Communication Systems (London: Peter Peregrinus, 1991) esp. pp. 237–8.
Lessing, ‘Cinderella in the Sky,’ p. 198.
The use of a small ground receiver was considered to have been very important as it significantly increased the number of people able to receive transmissions and, subsequently, the variety and success of potential DBS services. At the 1977 World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC-77) - a regulatory entity of the ITU - high-power DBS systems were allocated a frequency range in what is called the Ku band (11.7 to 12.7 GHz). The use of this band is impractical for less powerful satellites. In large part, the Ku band assignment also reflected, in the late 1970s, the capacity to mass-produce receivers for home consumers in developed countries and the ‘basic’ communication needs of LDCs. See Mark Williamson, ‘Broadcasting by Satellite: Some Technical Considerations’, in Ralph Negrine (ed.), Satellite Broadcasting, (London: Routledge, 1988) p. 38. In general, the physical limitations of satellite transmissions involve two core factors: first, the power of the radio-wave signal; and, second, the bandwidth available for transmission. In North, Central and South America, high-power DBS positions now have available 500 MHz of the Ku band (12.2–12.7 GHz) for downlink transmissions. This bandwidth may be subdivided into ‘channels’ - perhaps 24 MHz per channel. Again, depending on the needs of the user, space on this channel again can be subdivided. A standard television signal, for instance, now requires at least 6 MHz of bandwidth. In digital form, the uncompressed data rate (bps) needed to transmit the standard North American NTSC television signal is 90 million bps, whereas a high definition television (HDTV) transmission requires over 200 million bps. Other uncompressed data rates, in order of bps requirements, are as follows: video teleconferencing - from 64,000 to 1.5 million bps; telephone voice services - 64,000 bps; electronic mail - from 1,200 to 64,000 bps; and for a digital alarm system - 100 bps. Walter S. Baer, ‘New Communications Technologies and Services,’ in Paula R. Newberg (ed.), New Directions in Telecommunications Policy, vol.2 (Durham. NC: Duke University Press, 1989) p. 162.
Lessing, ‘Cinderella in the Sky,’ pp. 131 and 201–2.
Ibid.. p. 198.
Dante R. Fascell, ‘Modern Communications and Foreign Policy.’ Report by the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs (unpublished: 13 June 1967) p. 3R.
Ibid., p. 5R.
See US Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Developments. Hearings on ‘Satellite Broadcasting: Implications for Foreign Policy.’ 91st Cong., 1st sess., 13, 14, 15, 22 May 1969.
For more on this experiment (referred to as SITE - Satellite Instructional Television Experiment) and subsequent developments, see ibid., pp. 14–18; Vijay Menon, ‘The Case of India,’ in Meheroo Jussawalla, Tadayuki Okuma and Toshihiro Araki (eds), Information Technology and Global Interdependence (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989) pp. 281–5; and P.C. Chatterji, Broadcasting in India (New Delhi: Sage, 1991) pp. 126–33.
Larry Martinez, Communication Satellites: Power Politics in Space (Dedham, Mass.: Artech House, 1985) p. 30.
’Satellite Broadcasting: Implications for Foreign Policy,’ Report tabled in Hearings before US Congress, 13 May 1969, pp. 3R-6R. Also, personal interview with John Sigmund, Senior Economist, Division of Service Industries, International Trade Administration, US Department of Commerce, 10 September 1992, Washington, DC.
See US Congress. House. Committee on Foreign Affairs. Subcommittee on National Security Policy and Scientific Developments. Hearings on ‘Foreign Policy Implications of Satellite Communications,’ 91st Cong., 2nd sess., 23, 28, 30 April 1970, pp. 69–71. Also, Hearings on ‘Satellite Broadcasting: Implications for Foreign Policy,’ pp. 138–40.
See testimony by Richard N. Gardner, President Kennedy’s former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, in Hearings on ‘Satellite Broadcasting: Implications for Foreign Policy,’ pp. 64–5.
In 1966, AT&T charged ABC $12 million annually for its microwave distribution services. ABC estimated that a telesatellite system designed for its particular needs could save $5 million over a five-year period. See Smith, Communication via Satellite, p. 158. According to Heather Hudson, because of these minimal savings, ‘ABC may have been using its satellite option merely to put pressure on AT&T, by threatening defection if AT&T increased its rates’ - Hudson, Communication Satellites, p. 40.
In 1974, as a result of what was commonly called the ‘Open Skies’ policy, Western Union launched the first competitive domestic telesatellite. By 1984, seven US companies operated domestic telesatellite systems.
Building on the earlier ABC application, in 1969 CBS television officials proposed the formation of a domestic telesatellite system owned and operated by all three television networks.
President’s Task Force on Communications Policy, Final Report, (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 7 December 1968); herein referred to as ‘Rostow Report’.
For example, in 1972 (the year of the Watergate break-in and Presidential election) Nixon directed John Mitchell to file antitrust suits against the three television networks through the DoJ. These had been prepared in 1970 and were apparently applied two years later only as a result of the broadcasters’ ‘negative/anti-Nixon’ news reports. Two months before election day, the head of the OTP, Clay Whitehead, delivered a speech in San Francisco that was commonly interpreted as another threat. Whitehead claimed that an OTP study supported the demands of the American Screen Actors’ Guild that ABC, NBC and CBS should be compelled by the FCC to spend more money on original productions rather than airing reruns. The message to the networks was clear: modify negative coverage of White House activities or face higher costs and legal skirmishes. Tunstall, Communications Deregulation, p. 208.
Lyndon B. Johnson, ‘Message from the President of the US: Recommendations Relative to World Communications’ (14 August 1967), reprinted in Rostow Report, Appendix A, p. 3.
Kinsley, Outer Space and Inner Sanctums.p. 150.
Rostow Report, chap. 7, p. 32.
Ibid., p. 33. Lloyd Musolf estimated in 1968 that a domestic DBS system with roughly similar capacities would cost half as much as the GSO-terrestrial hybrid system proposed by Comsat in 1966. See Musolf (ed.), Communications Satellites in Political Orbit, p. 148.
Rostow Report, chap. 7, p. 33.
For examples, see Barry Cole and Mal Oettinger, Reluctant Regulators, The FCC and the Broadcast Audience (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978), chap. 10.
Rostow Report, chap. 7, pp. 36–9.
White House Memorandum to Dean Burch, Chairman FCC, 23 January 1970. Quoted in Kinsley, Outer Space and Inner Sanctums, p. 157 (emphasis added).
Burch was a well-known ideologue in favor of private enterprise. Opponents to his FCC appointment called him ‘rash’ and a’reckless intellectual hipshooter,’ among other things. Unnamed sources quoted in Magnant, Domestic Satellite. p. 160.
Hudson, Communication Satellites, pp. 46–7. According to Burch, the ‘public interest’ is served by actions that ‘create a prevailing climate in which the widest possible range and variety of services are provided to the public by the greatest practical number of independent entities, each one seeking to satisfy public wants in its own way.’ From Dean Burch, ‘Public Utility Regulation: In Pursuit of the Public Interest’, Public Utilities Fortnightly (September 1973) 70.
Details on these proposals are available in Smith, Communication via Satellite, pp. 168–72.
FCC recommendations quoted in Kinsley, Outer Space and Inner Sanctums, p. 176.
Smith, Communication via Satellite, p. 175.
See Magnant, Domestic Satellite, pp. 112–40.
Jill Hills, Deregulating Telecoms, Competition and Control in the US, Japan and Britain (London: Frances Pinter, 1986) p. 61. In response to the emergence of the Open Skies approach, AT&T Chairman John D. deButts assured shareholders that ‘[in the words] of our first president, ...“We have established and organized the business, and we do not propose to have it taken from us”.’ Quoted in Magnant, Domestic Satellite, p. 186; also see pp. 170–1.
Kinsley, Outer Space and Inner Sanctums, pp. 154–5.
’Message from the President of the US’ to House of Representatives, 90th Cong., 1st sess., August 1967, p. 4.
Interview with Jean Pruitt, Associate Administrator for International Affairs, NTIA, 4 March 1994, Washington, DC.
Jill Hills, Deregulating Telecoms, p. 50.
Ibid., p. 62.
Also, of course, a telephone transmission could use terrestrial facilities for one way of its communication.
Tunstall, Communications Deregulation, p. 72.
These opponents often cited IBM’s strategy of locking customers into its technical standards, thereby establishing an end-to-end hardware, information and communication monopoly. See Magnant, Domestic Satellite, pp. 229–37.
On the cost advantages of non-terrestrial telephone services for large business users, see Dan Schiller, Telematics and Government, p. 50.
In the early 1980s, publicly discussed cost estimates of establishing a DBS system ranged from approximately US $200 million to $1 billion. Tunstall, Communications Deregulation, p. 76.
Ibid., pp. 73–4.
Comsat’s authority enabled it to secure a $400 million line of credit from Chase Manhattan Bank despite the risky nature of the venture. James Chieh Hsiung, ‘Status and Implications of Federal Regulation of Direct Broadcast Satellite’ (unpublished PhD dissertation: Bowling Green State University, 1984) pp. 128–9.
Ibid., pp. 130–1. Also, personal interview with Michael Alpert, President, Michael Alpert and Associates, 2 September 1992, Washington, DC.
Figures in Florence Setzer and Jonathan Levy, Broadcast Television in a Multichannel Marketplace. Working Paper No.26 (Washington, DC: FCC Office of Plans and Policy, 1991) p. 68.
Figures in Ibid., p. 106.
For more details on the opposition of domestic broadcasters to DBS, see testimony of Vincent T. Wasilewski, President of the National Association of Broadcasters, in US Congress. House. Committee on Energy and Commerce. Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Consumer Protection, and Finance. Hearings on ‘Satellite Communications/Direct Broadcast Satellites,’ 97th Cong., 1st sess., 15 December 1981, pp. 207–20.
The other initial DBS license holders were CBS, Direct Broadcast Satellite Corporation, Focus Broadcast Satellite Corporation, Graphic Scanning, RCA, USSB, Video Satellite Systems. and Western Union.
Tunstall, Communications Deregulation, pp. 74–5. Also, interview with Michael Alpert.
Major investors in USCI included General Instruments and Prudential Insurance. The USCI coverage area was restricted to the US North-east, providing mostly movies for a$150 installation charge plus a monthly subscription fee of $40. Hudson, Communication Satellites, p. 74.
Tunstall, Comrnunications Deregulation. p. 73.
Ibid., pp. 76.
Kinsley, Outer Space and Inner Sanctums, p. 3.
’Communications Satellites: An Introduction,’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 23 (April 1967) 3 (emphases added).
Samuel Lewis, Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs, Department of State, testimony in US Congress. House. Committee on International Relations. Subcommittee on International Organizations. Hearings on ‘UNESCO: Challenges and Opportunities for the United States,’ 94th Congr., 2nd sess., 14 June 1976, p. 3.
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Comor, E.A. (1998). Telesatellite Policy and DBS, 1962–1984. In: Communication, Commerce and Power. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26235-9_3
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