{"id":23198,"date":"2014-12-17T07:28:56","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T12:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyesofageneration.com\/?p=23198"},"modified":"2016-10-24T16:34:13","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T20:34:13","slug":"december-17-1976-wtcg-atlanta-becomes-first-us-satellite-tv-station-at-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/?p=23198","title":{"rendered":"December 17, 1976&#8230;WTCG Atlanta Becomes First US Satellite TV Station"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\"  title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/December-17-1976...WTCG-Atlanta-Becomes-First-US-Satellite-TV-Station-At-100.jpg\" \/><\/a><br \/>December 17, 1976&#8230;WTCG Atlanta Becomes First US Satellite TV Station <\/p>\n<p>At 1:00 Eastern Time the afternoon of December 17, 1976, WTCG&#8217;s signal was beamed via the Satcom 1 satellite to four cable systems in Grand Island, Nebraska; Newport News, Virginia; Troy, Alabama and Newton, Kansas. The first broadcast was the 1948 film &#8216;Deep Waters&#8217;, which had been in progress for 30 minutes on channel 17 in Atlanta. <\/p>\n<p>Instantly, WTCG went from being a small independent television station that was available only in Georgia and neighboring states to a major coast-to-coast operation. WTCG became a so-called &#8220;superstation&#8221; and set a precedent for today&#8217;s basic cable television. By 1978, WTCG was carried on cable providers in all 50 states.<\/p>\n<p>WTCG became only the second US cable channel to transmit its programming via satellite; HBO was the first, on September 30, 1975 but cable subscribers were required to pay extra to receive that service. Ted Turner&#8217;s innovation signaled the start of the basic cable revolution. WTCG (for Turner Communications Group) changed its call sign to WTBS (Turner Broadcasting System) on August 27, 1979.<\/p>\n<p>Below, Atlanta legend, and later national legend Bill Tush talks about those early days and the infamously insane news casts he hosted back then.  What a Hoot! Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Bg5S8d0UCl8\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Bg5S8d0UCl8<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bill Tush talks about the early days of WTBS\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bg5S8d0UCl8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>Bill Tush was a vital part of the beginning of Superstation WTBS and CNN. People in Atlanta saw something we will never see again and still talk about today&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/189359747768249\/posts\/769008839803334\">Source<\/a>  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December 17, 1976&#8230;WTCG Atlanta Becomes First US Satellite TV Station At 1:00 Eastern Time the afternoon of December 17, 1976, WTCG&#8217;s signal was beamed via the Satcom 1 satellite to four cable systems in Grand Island, Nebraska; Newport News, Virginia; Troy, Alabama and Newton, Kansas. The first broadcast was the 1948 film &#8216;Deep Waters&#8217;, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":23199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_popup_image":0,"_vp_format_audio_url":"","_vp_album_images":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail":0,"_vp_custom_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail_cover":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[724,720,680,761,725],"class_list":["post-23198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cast","tag-host","tag-people","tag-satellite-tv","tag-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}