Has anyone here on this forum own a C-band dish? Tell your memories here!

I remember once watching a NFL game between Minnesota and New England on T302. Nothing memorable about the game, expect that it went to overtime. Later on i changed channels and found the Raiders/Rams game, also on T302. These were CBS feeds.

I do remember watching NCAA tournament games- and i wanted to see games in full, rather than CBS switching around. I was sick during the first 2 days of the 1991 tourney, so ended up watching the Pittsburgh-Georgia game. What was interesting was that it was the backhaul feed, so it didn't switch away to other games during the game.

Now i can remember Don Cherry on the raw CBC feeds. He could be crazy, lol.

gr8oldies said:

Ah, yes! Satellite TV week! That was a handy guide. It's all coming back to me T301 and 302, G4. I remember one of them going down (this was before the 1998 outage) and a lot of feeds moving..some which normally were scrambled weren't. We could pick up a French language station from Montreal which mostly ran American shows and movies dubbed into French. There's nothing like watching The Blues Brothers and the Adam West "Batman" in French (le Pow?). There was also something called the Las Vegas Television Network that launched. Daytime and evenings had everything from interviews with Las Vegas stars of the past to a kids show..and overnights were soft porn.

Interesting times.

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I once watched a Montreal Canadiens game...in French. It was from SRC, and they were playing an American team. I couldn't understand what the announcers were saying, but it was interesting to hear the game called in French.

It just came to me that there was a pet channel on those big dishes. What they did was show 15 minutes of a animal while on the scene was a number for you to call to adopt. All animals were shown not just dogs and cats. I can remember a video of a horse just standing there eating hay. I wonder how they ship those animals if one would be interested in adopting ???

I remember when "Days of Our Lives" was fed out on *both* E2 and K2. Obviously, one of the feeds was for Canada, maybe CTV or Global.

danderson6500 said:

I once watched a Montreal Canadiens game...in French. It was from SRC, and they were playing an American team. I couldn't understand what the announcers were saying, but it was interesting to hear the game called in French.

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You can now hear NHL hockey in Sikh as well (or is it Hindi?).

Were shows fed with or without commercials? Did it depend on the network/production company or sydincator?

crainbebo said:

Satellite TV Week had some programs listed on a "Recurring Feeds" section. I have the 9/21/86 edition right next to me, and a few programs listed were:
Donahue on W5-15, 9a/10a ET weekdays
Merv Griffin at 8p weeknights, T301-9 (Wold Communications)
PM Magazine at 9:10a weekdays, W5-18 (This was the Group W feed channel)
This Week in Baseball on T301-23, Thursday morning 1a ET and another feed at 8:15p ET. T301-23 was one of a few Wold Communications feed channels, another was T301-9.

PBS had three national feeds in 1986, Westar 4-15, 17 and 21. The schedules varied by time zone.

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A few more

Days of Our Lives was on E2 for years. So was The Young and the Restless. Northern Exposure had one of the E2 slots too.

American Gladiators was on T1, so was On Scene: Emergency Response. Can't remember if both used T1 for their entire runs, but i think they did. Trauma Center used T1 too. Another show that used T1 was Sisters.

danderson6500 said:

Were shows fed with or without commercials? Did it depend on the network/production company or sydincator?

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I am curious about that one too. My guess is that they weren't since commercials tend to be regional even on the networks. Last time I checked CBS here in Denver during The Young and the Restless was an ad for Disneyland. I heard the ad ran in Portland, OR and Salt Lake City too but in Virginia and Maryland the ad was for Walt Disney World. Same with Carls Jr and Hardees too. Of course if the show like Days of Our Lives was being feed by satellite to either CTV or Global in Canada they have their own ads for Canada.

danderson6500 said:

Were shows fed with or without commercials? Did it depend on the network/production company or syndicator?

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Those and the purpose of the feed. If it was a syndication feed to local stations, it probably had commercials in some breaks and black for other breaks, since, in most cases, the syndicator sells some of the time and the local station sells some. It varies from show to show.

Same goes for network feeds. If it was something like an early feed from networks to stations (like Young and the Restless used to feed in the early morning hours), all of the breaks would be full except for the station break at roughly the half-hour point.

But if it happened to be a true backhaul, for instance, Johnny Carson being fed from LA to NY, there wouldn't be commercials. The band would continue playing with the "more to come" slide on the screen through the entire two-minute break (1 minute for national commercials from NBC New York, 1 minute for local stations.) Again, near half-hour mark, there would be a station break. I think the backhaul still had the band playing throughout, but NBC New York fed out black during the station break.

E2 was a good place to find shows. I found Young and the Restless, Days of Our Lives and a few prime time shows on there. Northern Exposure was on E2 too. With DOOL, i thought it was Columbia feeding that show early, but I've found out that it was an early feed to Canada. Maybe Global wanted a feed free of network bugs etc.

Some shows were fed with the national commercials. Black spots were local breaks. Sometimes you'd see several promos during that time. Those are barter, or cash + barter programs. Programs with 2-3 minutes of black screen in between were cash-only programs. The Simpsons is one of those.

crainbebo said:

Some shows were fed with the national commercials. Black spots were local breaks. Sometimes you'd see several promos during that time. Those are barter, or cash + barter programs. Programs with 2-3 minutes of black screen in between were cash-only programs. The Simpsons is one of those.

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I remember that on some shows, like Days of Our Lives you saw 10 seconds of black then the next scene. Those were feeds for Canada. The syndicated shows had black spots for local breaks. So did NBC's Ku & C1 feeds.

During the 1991 season, i was moving the dish from T301 & 302 to get Redskins games on CBS, and there was one time i needed the dish to see a Falcons game because CBS was airing baseball. I guess it was the one at the 49ers.

Back when the NBC feeds were on K2, I'd see things like the announcers rehearsing before a game, the Today crew sitting on the couch bantering during a :25 break, and sometimes news feeds being fed. I one saw Tom Brokaw doing something before Nightly News one time too.

I found out rather quickly how professional broadcasters like Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel were on the air, but off, they could be idiots sometimes. Tom would sometimes make comments about his hairdresser sometimes. As far as Bryant and Jane, they seemed to spend every :25 break complaining about everything. Deborah Norville did that sometimes too, I'm not sure about Katie though. Dick Enberg, on NFL games seemed to do that too.

danderson6500 said:

I found out rather quickly how professional broadcasters like Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley and Bryant Gumbel were on the air, but off, they could be idiots sometimes. Tom would sometimes make comments about his hairdresser sometimes. As far as Bryant and Jane, they seemed to spend every :25 break complaining about everything. Deborah Norville did that sometimes too, I'm not sure about Katie though. Dick Enberg, on NFL games seemed to do that too.

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Like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert !! On the air they were the best of friends but in commercial breaks of "At the Movies" or whatever they called their show at the time they bad mouth each other like "...and the biggest a-hole is Roger !!" says Gene Siskel while Roger Ebert had the look of kill on his face and of course Roger said something bad about Gene. Now that show was taped but behind the scenes of that show were on You Tube sometime ago. Somebody posted online that the two were really best of friends but one wouldn't have known that by watching the clips of that.