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Telesatellite Policy and DBS, 1962-1984 67

9 Ibid., pp. 64-71.
10 Hudson, Communication Satellites, p. 17.
11 On 23 July 1962, the world's first transatlantic television broadcast was
conducted in public. The primary reason for this display of US technol-
ogy was its assumed propaganda value for American science and inno-
vation. See US Congress. House. Committee on Science and
Astronautics. Hearings on 'Commercial Communications Satellites.'
87th Cong., 2nd sess., 18 September 1962, p. 153.
12 Hudson, Communication Satellites, p. 18.
13 According to Delbert Smith, 'Hughes was ready to abandon its project
in 1961 if NASA would not add its sponsorship'- Smith, Communica-
tion via Satellite, p. 88.
14 US Congress. Senate. <:;:ommittee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on
Antitrust and Monopoly. Hearings on 'Antitrust Problems of the Space
Satellite Communications System.' 87th Cong., 2nd sess., 12 Aprill962,
pp. 412-17.
15 Pucket testimony in ibid., p. 421.
16 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 Commu-
nications Satellites,' 1962, pp. 5-6.
17 Murphy in ibid., p. 7.
18 Jeremy Tunstall, Communications Deregulation, The Unleashing of
America's Communications Industry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986)
p. 65.
19 Lawrence Lessing, 'Cinderella in the Sky,' Fortune, LXXVI (5) (October
1967) 196.
20 Eugene G. Fubini quoted in House Hearings on 'Commercial Commun-
ications Satellites,' 1962, p. 117.
21 Ibid., p. 116. Unlike cable and other terrestrial systems, per unit satellite
transmission costs are not affected by distance. In other words, telesa-
tellite transmission costs do not go up as the distance between commu-
nicators increases (and vice versa). Terrestrial telecommunication
system costs thus are said to be distance-sensitive while non-terrestrial
systems, in relative terms, are not.
22 G. Griffith Johnson testimony in ibid., pp. 141-2.
23 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.