Earth Stations: Sky in the Pie

By JAY COCKS

Big dishes bring satellite programming right into the backyard

No mistaking them. Some look like a cake mold capable of turning out angel food for 2,500. Others look like a louvered back door from a tract house in Brobdingnag, or a creature from a 1950s horror movie--the wretched spawn of reckless radioactive experimentation, the amazing colossal sand dollar.

Don't be fooled. The scooped-out gimcrack is nothing more than a TV antenna. It is quite a bit more, however, than the rabbit-ears atop the family console.

While the rest of the neighborhood wonders when it will be wired for cable and settles down for another dose of network gruel, the weird piece of machinery across the way is pulling down programs from at least three pay-TV companies. Plus "feeds" from network correspondents hours before the evening news gets on the air. Plus NASA transmissions of pictures from Saturn. Plus soccer from Brazil. Plus the glorious miscellany of perhaps 50 to 60 programs a day, from closed-circuit prizefights to S.R.O. symphony concerts that are beamed off whichever satellite is being tuned in.

In the jargon of the video revolution, this exotic antenna and its associated electronics are called an earth station, and the price is just as fancy as the name: from $3,500 to $14,000 for a good unit. The high tab is for high tech. An earth station pulls in a signal from one of the twelve U.S. and Canadian communication satellites beaming down from a fixed position 22,300 miles above the equator--what vid-whizzes call a "geosynchronous orbit." The signal is focused into an amplifier, which magnifies it up to 100,000 times before it is converted to a conventional TV signal.

There are estimated to be anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 earth stations in operation. "There will probably be 10,000 more of these things sold next year," enthuses Dave Bondon, president of a Hightstown, N.J., electronics subsidiary that makes earth station antennas. Says Andy Hatfield, whose AVCOM company makes components for the station: "It's phenomenal. You see these pictures that came from Saturn and it's like being part of NASA. Watch an earth station and you'll never look at terrestrial television again."

Confirmed extraterrestrials are a diverse group. John Flynn, a hospital security guard who lives in Brooklyn, has a homemade job he built out of a handbook and $7,500 worth of parts. Record and Movie Producer Lou Adler has a rather more elaborate installation out in Malibu. Heavyweight Champ Larry Holmes has one at his digs in Easton, Pa.

Although video freaks may think of themselves as space-age ham operators, innocently tuning in on whatever signals bounce about in the ether, satellite programmers consider them electronic buccaneers and mutter darkly about "tapping," "free-lunching" and "unauthorized reception." Among the toughest in its stance has been Time Inc.'s Home Box Office, whose chief counsel, John Redpath, says the company is considering "all possible alternatives to stop" unofficial signal reception.

While programmers and cable outfits get hot under the corporate collar, earth station owners and suppliers profess little concern. They point out that the majority of earth station owners live well outside cable range and generally do not try to redistribute or sell the signal. Benson Begun, a vice president of the Warner Amex satellite operation, concedes that "we don't see the backyard individual receiver as a significant economic threat. But the pirate who puts up an antenna on an apartment complex or a hotel is viewed as much more significant, and such people we are actively pursuing."

Satellite users could--and might--scramble the signals bouncing off the communications satellites and then unscramble them for cable subscribers. But FCC Staff Engineer Wilbert Nixon says such a process would represent "an expensive investment." Just now, there are probably not enough earth stations to justify a major legal or technological fuss, and confusion will probably continue to reign in the absence of a definitive court test.

There are strong indications, however, that the audience and the market for earth stations will continue to grow. Until 1979, the FCC required a construction permit for any earth station. Now a video freak with a fair amount of technical finesse can assemble one from a Heathkit for $6,995, and students from Hall High School in Spring Valley, Ill., put together a fine version with a $1,700 kitty and some Army surplus parts. At least 70 companies can now supply earth stations or various components for them. In Hailey, Idaho, a small outfit called Commtek Inc. publishes a monthly SAT Guide that furnishes up to 140 pages of listings to its 12,000 subscribers all over North America and the Caribbean.

The FCC is considering a modification of its spacing regulations so that there would be room for at least 20 new satellites in the next five years or so. The heavens could be full of satellites floating around like apples in a Halloween bobbing tub, and the SAT Guide may eventually get as thick as the Manhattan Yellow Pages. More significant, the Communications Satellite Corp. (COMSAT) has submitted the first application to the FCC for permission to establish a direct broadcast system. By the mid-1980s, this system could conceivably be sending down three channels of pay programming into smaller (2 1/2 ft. in diameter), cheaper ($200-$500) earth stations. Meanwhile, an RCA subsidiary, and several other firms, including CBS, have plans of their own to develop direct broadcast systems. All in all, prospects seem bright for many more people to join the folks in Brooklyn, Hall High School and Easton, Pa., on the satellite beam.

--By Jay Cocks. Reported by David S. Jackson/Washington and Gary Ruderman/Chicago, with other U.S. bureaus

With reporting by David S. Jackson/Washington, Gary Ruderman/Chicago

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