Satellite Broadcasters
Satellite Broadcasters was Flarland's first satellite television company. It was founded in 1982, started broadcasts in February 1984 and was bankrupt in 1998.
History[edit | edit source]
Founding[edit | edit source]
Incorporation of The Satellite Channel to Satellite Broadcasters[edit | edit source]
Murdoch steps in[edit | edit source]
Digitalization[edit | edit source]
At the same time as the so-called Scramble for Digital, in which the government assigned slots to three digital satellite operators, Satellite Broadcasters wanted to get involved, in an attempt to use Satellite Broadcasters as a breeding ground for FOXTEL and SKY's digital services.
The three services - FST Digital, Sat Digital and SelecTV all launched on the same day - June 6, 1996, in time for the Eurectipherian Championships. Satellite Broadcasters had a package of about forty channels, and was pending approval from the government to launch four new channels, Sat Tech, Sat Leisure, Sat Plus and Sat Turbo. Eventually the plans to launch all of these channels backfired due to competition issues,
Bankruptcy[edit | edit source]
Murdoch tried to keep the company afloat by the year 2000, as profits were supposed to be at an all-time high, unfortunately the company had underbid for the then-upcoming World Cup in Northulia due to its low-end digital equipment, the launch of SelecTV and dire economical situation. This led to the shutdown of a number of channels starting March 31, 1998.
On April 19, Satellite Broadcasters announced that it would likely collapse "any time soon". On May 26, third-party companies ceased providing programming. Murdoch believed that the plans were "unconstitutional" and tried to appeal to the court without success.
The company was now reporting a record low 390.000 subscribers. The digital service was reportedly having failures.
On August 1, the government anounced the collapse of Satellite Broadcasters, the shutdown date was scheduled to be December 31, 1998, with all SatB-owned channels ending before midnight.
Most of Sat News' team migrated to radio, while a small part moved to a new channel, the Today Channel.
Murdoch's media investments in Flarland after SatB's collapse[edit | edit source]
SKY News continued broadcasting, shortly afterwards the FOX Networks Group (formerly FOX International Channels) had emerged, if we don't count FOX Kids. FOX started gaining momentum on the FST-Cable Flarland network when the channel opened in 2002, taking cues from other FOX-branded channels worldwide, FOX News later started broadcasting to Flarland in 2003.
Following the sale of many of 21st Century Fox's assets to Disney, FOX News remained the last Murdoch-owned channel to operate in the country, the channel stopped broadcasting on Flarlandian linear TV on December 31, 2020 due to contractual issues, although a number of theories have emerged speculating that it's technically a conspiracy to eliminate all Sierran Republican dogma from the country.
Innovations[edit | edit source]
Satellite Broadcasters introduced the concept of an all-news channel to Flarland.
Operations[edit | edit source]
Technological[edit | edit source]
Channels[edit | edit source]
- Sat One: the first channel to be launched by Satellite Broadcasters, in experimental mode starting October 1, 1983, when the channel had a four-hour schedule and was mostly sent to cable operators. By the mid-90s it tried buying many foreign shows in an attempt to emulate SKY One and the later Northulian channel FOX 8.
