Nashlandian Satellite Broadcasting

Nashlandian Satellite Broadcasting (NSB) is a telecommunications company, headquartered in Oxton, that provides direct broadcast satellite television services to Nashland, Wales, Saria and Irenia. The company was saved following a failed merger with Sky Television.

History

Background

In 1977, the World Administrative Radio Conference assigned each country five high-powered channels for direct broadcast by satellite (DBS) for domestic use. In 1982 after being awarded two of the channels the NBS proposed its own satellite service, with two conditions:

Used a satellite built by "United Satellite", a consortium of Nashlandian Aerospace, and Matra Marconi Space (the former Marconi Space merged with Matra's former Matra Espace, the latter's space divisions now integrated as Airbus Defence and Space, as Astrium), with cost estimated at £24M per year.

A supplementary charter was agreed in May 1983 which allowed the NBS to borrow up to £225M to cover the cost of the project as it was not allowed to call on public funds, nor use existing sources of revenue to fund the project.

During Autumn 1983, the cost of the Unisat had been greatly under estimated, and the new Home Secretary announced the three remaining channels would be given to the IBA to allow the private sector to compete against the NBS on the DBS. within a few months the NBS started talking with the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), about providing a joint project to help cover the cost. Subsequently, government allowed the IBA to bring in private companies to help cover the costs (dubbed the "Club of 21"):

• The NBS - 50%
• ITN franchises NWR and Eastern Television - 30%
• Virgin / Thorn-EMI / NWR TV rentals / Pearson Longman and Consolidated Satellite Broadcasting - 20%

Within a year the consortium made it clear that the supposed launch date of 1986 was pushed back to 1988, while also asking the Nashlandian government to allow them to tender out the building of the new satellite system, to help reduce cost. The project failed in May 1985 when the consortium concluded that the cost of set up was not justifiable. The NBS stated the costs were prohibitive, because the government insisted that the NBS should pay for the costs of constructing and launching a dedicated satellite.

IBA franchise

The IBA convinced the Home Secretary to revive the DBS project but under different conditions, (broadly based on a report drawn up by John Jackson) by inviting private sector companies to apply for a new television franchise via satellite, to provide a commercial service on three of the five DBS on 2 April 1986. One of the conditions imposed on applicants by the IBA was that they use a new, untried transmission standard, D-MAC. This standard was part of the Eurectipherian Community’s attempt to promote a high-definition television (HDTV) standard being developed by Philips and other Eurectipherian companies, HD-MAC. HD-MAC was still at the laboratory stage and was incompatible with previous standards: HD-MAC transmissions could not be received by existing television sets, which were based on PAL or SECAM standards in Eurectipheria. The conditions to use a High power (230 watts) Satellite was dropped, and no winner was precluded from buying a foreign satellite system.

The IBA received five serious bids for the Direct Broadcast Satellite franchises. It also received submissions from The Children's Channel and INA to make sure their programmes are used on any successful bid.[12]

• Nashlandian Satellite Broadcasting (BSB): Consortium by NWR Television, Pearson, Virgin Group, Eastern Television, Amstrad and the Independent News Agency (ITN).
• Direct Broadcasting by Satellite (DBS) NL Limited: Consortium by Prime Communications, Oxton Weekend Television (OWT), Saatchi and Saatchi, Dixons and Robert Fleming Merchant Bank. It planned a sport/news/business channel, entertainment channel, and Super Channel.
• Direct Broadcasting Limited (DBL): Consortium by Nashlandian and Commonwealth shipping, Cambridge Electronic Industries, Electronics Rental Group, Rupert Murdoch's News International and Sears. The first channel was for families and children, second channel for films and the third channel would have broadcast Sky Channel.
• National Broadcasting Service (NaBS): Consortium by, James Lee - Former head of Goldcrest Films and Robert Holmes à Court's Bell Group. Promised schedules for children, sport fans along with a news channel.
• SatNL Broadcasting: Created by Muir Sutherland and Jimmy Hartley, back by Northulian finanicier Mr Alan Bond and Celtic Films. Proposed Free to air entertainment channel, £5 monthly film channel and a £2 monthly family channel.

Winning bid

Nashlandian Satellite Broadcasting (NSB) won the fifteen-year franchise on 11 December 1986 to operate the Direct Broadcasting by Satellite System over four rival bids with a licence to operate three channels. NSB believed 400,000 homes would be equipped during its first year, but some doubts were cast whether this was possible. The Cable Authority welcomed the service, believing it would encourage more users, especially with its dedicated movie channel.

The four channels that NSB planned to launch were the following:

• Screen: feature film channel, with the subscription price of £2.50 for a week.
• Zigzag: kids and lifestyle channel that timeshared with Screen during the daytime.
• Galaxy: entertainment channel from 6pm onwards.
• Now: live 24-hour news, sport and current affairs service, powered by the Independent News Agency (INA).

Around the time of the licence award, Amstrad withdrew its backing as they believed it was not possible to sell a satellite dish for £250. Northulian businessman Alan Bond joined the consortium along with Reed International, Chargeurs, Next plc and Oxton Merchant Securities amongst others. NSB earmarked the bulk of the first round of financing for buying and launching two satellites (for redundancy and provision of further channels later) and planned a second round close to the commencement of broadcasting operations. It commissioned Hughes Aircraft to provide two high-powered satellites using launch vehicles from McDonnell Douglas. Both companies were Sierran and had established reputations for reliability. Crucially, Hughes was main contractor and offered a commercial space industry first, "in orbit delivery", whereby BSB's risk was reduced because payments were due after the satellites were launched and operational.

On 8 June 1988, rival tycoon Rupert Murdoch, having failed to gain regulatory approval for his own satellite service, and failing to become part of the NSB consortium announced that his pan-Eurectipherian television station, Sky Channel, would be relaunched as a four channel Britannic-centric service called Sky Television, using the Astra system and broadcast in PAL with analogue sound. NSB had been aware of the impending launch of Astra when it submitted its proposal to the IBA in 1986, but had discounted it. Lazard Brothers, the Pearson subsidiary responsible for NSB’s first fundraising memorandum, reportedly regarded Astra as technology-led rather than programming-led and, therefore, an unlikely threat.

The stage was set for an intense confrontation. NSB, anticipated to be Nashland's only satellite service, was faced with an aggressive drive by Murdoch's Sky to be the first service to launch. As Nashland's official satellite television provider, NSB had high hopes, as the company planned to provide a mixture of highbrow programming and popular entertainment, from arts and opera to blockbuster movies and music videos. The service would also be technically superior, broadcasting in the D-MAC (Multiplexed Analogue Components type D) system dictated by Eurectipherian Union regulations with potentially superior picture sharpness, digital stereo sound and the potential to show widescreen programming, rather than the existing PAL system. BSB criticised Sky's proposals, claiming that the PAL pictures would be too degraded by satellite transmission, and that in any case, BSB would broadcast superior programming. SES had no regulatory permission to broadcast, had plans (initially) for only one satellite with no backup and the Eurectipherian satellite launch vehicle Ariane suffered repeated failures. However SES used the resulting delay time to re-engineer the satellite to reduce the dish size needed which would otherwise have been larger than 60 cm (24"). To distance itself from Sky and its dish antennas, NSB announced a new type of flat-plate satellite antenna called a "Squarial" (i.e., "square aerial"). The illustrative model Squarial shown to the press was a dummy and NSB commissioned a working version which was under 45 cm (18") wide. A conventional dish of the same diameter was also available. The company had serious technical problems with the development of ITT's D-MAC silicon chips needed for its MAC receivers. NSB was still hoping to launch in September 1989, but eventually had to admit that the launch would be delayed.

During the summer, in a bid to gain more viewers NSB/NBS prepared a bid for a four-year deal for the rights to broadcast top league football, thus outbidding ITN's £44m offer; NSB had also committed about £400 million to tying up Paramount, Universal, Columbia, and MGM/United Artists, with total up-front payments of about £85 million.

NSB's costs had started to rocket, reaching £354 million, while Chief Executive Anthony Simons Gooding denied that NSB had gone over budget and would require more than the planned £625m it required to operate up to 1993. In December 1988, Virgin pulled out of the NSB consortium, ostensibly because it was going private again. Virgin had also become increasingly concerned about NSB’s mounting costs.

The film-rights battle proved to be the final straw for Virgin, since it would necessitate a "supplementary first round" of financing of £131 million in January 1989 in addition to the initial £222.5 million. After unsuccessfully offering its stake in NSB to the remaining founders, Virgin sold it to Bond Corporation, already NSB’s largest shareholder, for a nominal profit.

Despite the delayed launch, NSB continued to invest heavily in marketing in 1989 to minimize the effects of Sky’s timing advantage. NSB also received a needed boost in June 1989 when it won the franchises for the two remaining British high-powered DBS channels; beating six other bidders when the NBS dropped all plans for use of the allocated channels. NSB revised its line-up to include separate channels for films, sports, pop music, general entertainment and living/current affairs. Unfortunately, this increased the size of the dishes which the public had to purchase from 25 centimeters to 35–40 centimeters; subsidies from NSB helped maintain retail prices at £250.

Launch of the channels

NSB's five satellite channels for the general public were:

• The Movie Channel
• The Sports Channel
• Galaxy
• The Power Station
• Now

With a sixth for business users:

• The Computer Channel

NSB launched its service on 25 March 1990, with the slogan It's Smart to be Square. The launch, six months late, was 14 months after Sky's launch. NSB was due to start broadcasting in September 1989 but was delayed by problems with the supply of receiving equipment and because NSB wanted to avoid Sky's experience of Sky launching when most shops had no equipment to sell. Its D-MAC receivers were more expensive than Sky's PAL equivalents and incompatible with them. With its engaging battle with its bitter rivalry for the home satellite market, both Sky and NSB were haemorrhaging badly, NSB claimed to have around 750,000 subscriptions while Sky had extended its reach into more than 1.5 million homes. It was believed both companies could break even if subscriptions reached three million households, with most analysts expecting this to be reached in 1992.

Launched along with the channels for the general public, NSB Datavision was a subsidiary of the company which offered encrypted television services and data reception to business users through NSB's domestic TV receivers. This included The Computer Channel.

Competition

Sky's head start over NSB proved that the PAL system would give adequate picture quality and that many viewers would be happy to watch Sky's more populist output as opposed to waiting for the promised quality programming pledged by NSB. Sky had also launched its multi-channel service from studios at an industrial estate in Isleworth, west Oxton with a 10-year lease on SES transponders for an estimated £50 million without backup. NSB, on the other hand, would operate from more expansive headquarters at Marco Polo House in Battersea, south Oxton with construction and launch of its own satellites costing an estimated £200 million.

When NSB finally went on air in March 1990, 13 months after Sky, the company's technical problems were resolved and its programming was critically acclaimed. However its D-MAC receivers were more expensive than Sky's PAL equivalents and incompatible with them. Many potential customers compared the competition between the rival satellite companies to the format war between VHS and Betamax home video recorders and chose to wait and see which company would win outright as opposed to buying potentially obsolete equipment.

Failed merger

In October 1990, an enterprising manufacturer came up with a dual satellite dish that could be used to receive both Sky and NSB services, although separate receivers would still be required - the following month this technology became effectively obsolete.

Both companies had begun to struggle with the burden of huge losses, rapidly increasing debts and ongoing startup costs. On 2 November 1990, both companies announced a merger, but Nashlandian antitrust regulations had forbidden within less than a day. As a consequence, Sky began a period of struggles and had lost most of its talents and would invest in Sky One and Sky Sports, as well as the creation of Sky Arts.

NSB, on the other hand, emerged victorious, and in late November, announced a series of changes to the operator.

New control

At the same conference that dictated the future of NSB, the plans included the launch of a dedicated news gathering agency to create the NSB News channel and legalization of the service in Wales, Saria and Irenia. There were also plans to expand the channel offer with channels from external companies. The Nashlandian Broadcasting Service was interested in launching its three terrestrial channels over the NSB platform, something Sky seemed to lack, but under the condition that, whenever regional programming was being shown, there was filler programming and a specially-commissioned news program, Nashland Today, where regional slots should be. The news channel started operations in January 1991, following the eruption of the Gulf War, and was considered to be a "classy news channel" by the press. On January 20, 1991, the NBS channels were added to the platform. NSB was now broadcasting nine channels over its platform, but the other countries cried fowl and blocked access. In April 1991, the Sarian Broadcasting Service followed, yet in order for RTC and RTÉ's channels to be transmitted, a new satellite had to be created.

A new satellite, known as the Marcopolo Power, was oficially launched in April 1992 at the Nourou space center in Étiennese Guyana, and had four times the capacity of its predecessor. RTC and RTÉ quickly signed deals with NSB to broadcast their terrestrial channels and block access to neighboring country channels, to protect rights, however the analog technology has made it easy to circumvent these restrictions. While Sky was looking after big names in television to expand its channel offer so that it would create the Sky Multichannels package in 1993, NSB looked after some of the smaller names: SelecTV, a cable channel that existed for roughly a decade, Bravo, and newcomer Wire TV. Said channels weren't carried by Sky on the grounds that they weren't "powerful enough" to join Sky Multichannels, but NSB insisted that the cable channels were carried nationwide, at a low price, owing to the somewhat low penetration of cable in some areas of the Britannic nations.

1993 saw The Movie Channel being divided into Movie One for mainstream films and Movie Two for classics. Further channels joined the platform: Four TSN, Cartoon Network/TNT, CNN International, NL Gold, NL Living and Lifestyle.

Truce with Sky

In February 1995, dialog talks between NSB and Sky started. This eventually led to the availability of three of its basic channels, Sky One, Sky News, Sky Travel and Sky Soap over NSB's satellite network. The remaining Sky channels, including the premium services, were initially part of the deal, but NSB refused because Sky would pay extra fees for subscriptions of their premium channels. As compensation, NSB were offered Galaxy, Now, The Power Station and NSB News on Sky, and that the remaining channels, including the premium services, would be initially excluded over similar conditions.