Telstar 4 (Ku-Band) after Alphastar

JosephHolloway1998

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Original poster
Jan 29, 2019
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Porter Ranch, CA
after Alphastar's satellite services (an Canadian/American hybrid) shut down in August 1997. which channels/transponders were being moved to and occupied on Telstar 4 Ku (T7) aside from the ABC affiliate and NewsOne feeds? I wonder what Telstar 4 Ku was being used for after Alphastar ended? Please tell me what you think!
 
Yahoo! Groups

Against my better judgement I will post this message .
This will tell you what sports backhauls were around this time. As I recall, ABC used the sat for their NFL playoff games. KCAL Lakers games were on the sat too.

Sent from my VS995 using the SatelliteGuys app!
 
weren't there any news feeds on the satellite?
Alphastar carried several major news channels; the mid to late 1990s were the heyday of TV news networks:

  • CBC Newsworld
  • CNN
  • CNN Headline
  • CNN Financial
  • CNBC
  • MSNBC
  • Bloomberg Information TV
  • and maybe CPAC (a "public affairs" channel)
CTV News was pretty new and probably hadn't caught on yet.

Google is your friend as primestar31 noted.
 
Is there any list avalaible of the defunct alphastar line up?
Yes, there are lists of the video and music channels on Canadian-tv.com and radiodiscussions.com (it is actually the same list).

Useless minutiae as it isn't relatable to now, isn't in any way predictive of the the future and any conclusions that might have been drawn were invalidated by the fact that the service wasn't around long enough to see how it was going to play out.
 
Alphastar carried several major news channels; the mid to late 1990s were the heyday of TV news networks:

  • CBC Newsworld
  • CNN
  • CNN Headline
  • CNN Financial
  • CNBC
  • MSNBC
  • Bloomberg Information TV
  • and maybe CPAC (a "public affairs" channel)
CTV News was pretty new and probably hadn't caught on yet.

Google is your friend as primestar31 noted.
I meant after Alphastar's DBS services shut down in August 1997. They were in the process of moving to the newly launched Telstar 5 service.
 
You did lead with that.

The previous Telstar 4xx series satellites were seemingly cursed so I'm guessing programmers were not beating down doors to lease space.
Along with the sporting events, wasn't the sat (Telstar 4 Ku (T7)), used for ABC newsfeeds as well as PBS regionals? (SCETV (South Carolina Educational Television), GPTV (Georgia Public Television), LPB (Louisiana Public Broadcasting), FPTV (Florida Public TV) etc...), after Alphastar's DBS services shut down?
 
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but what about the ABC newsfeeds, and other channels? (like WTVX 34 (UPN - West Palm Beach))
Do you have any evidence to suggest that these affiliates had regular need to send programming to the parent network or to other affiliates? Many UPN affiliates had relatively limited production capability (if any) so pondering how they distributed what little they might have wrought isn't very stimulating. Having a route available is not the same as using it effectively.

There are roads that can take me pretty much all the way from my home to the southern tip of Argentina but I don't anticipate ever using most of them.
 
WTVX 34 (UPN - West Palm Beach), was on Telstar 4 (both C & Ku-Band) for about 4 weeks in November '97 because of transmitter problems. Then it moved to ITC on G6/17 (which was C-Band only; since SBS-6 was on the same orbital slot as that one (74"0 deg W)).
Link: Google Groups
 
Damn I wish I had time to worry about what station was on what bird for 5 minutes in 1998. Must be nice if that’s all you got to worry about!
 
After Alphastar shut down, ABC used the sat (Telstar 4 Ku) for SNG feeds on transponders 9 and 12. South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV), a local PBS affiliate was also on the same sat.