With apologies to Charles Dickens, “it was the best of times, it was the greatest of times.” It was also incredibly expensive. But in the 80s through to the 90s, those of us lucky enough to splurge on a 10' C-band satellite dish in our backyards or rooftops (like the one pictured below) were able to receive an incredible treasure trove of TV programming that will likely never be available to consumers again.
 
The breadth of stuff that was up there – and in the early days, unscrambled – was simply incredible. HBO, Showtime, Starz from the U.S., all the major TV networks, and all the cable stations that existed at the time, including ESPN, MTV, WTBS, WPIX, WGN and more.

Then there were the audio subcarriers that featured commercial free music from various eras, including the 60s and 70s, a sort of early free Sirius XM. There were radio stations (one uplinker began offering WCBS-FM, the all oldies outlet from New York, in perfect stereo, back when it was still in its prime. That was one of my favourites.) And hobbyists would often rent audio subcarrier time and do their own radio shows. All you had to know was when they were on to listen.  
 
Then there were the stations you never heard of – SelectTV, an early movies competitor, The Movie Channel and more. For a while, there was a plethora of porn on one bird, that was for mature eyes only.
 
But the best was the so-called “wild feeds,” which could be tough to find but well worthwhile once you did. These could be anything – a feed of a reporter’s story over satellite back to his or her network, complete with all the retakes, mistakes and different extros for different stations. Or a news person anywhere in the world getting ready for a live shot, and openly complaining about the people they worked with or some other gripe. A peek behind the curtain!

You could also see odd snippets of inexplicable stuff, like the unknown station that once put up a 2-minute video of someone called “The Amazing Mr. Lifto,” a geek act who apparently performed in nightclubs. I won’t go into exactly what he did, but let’s just say he lifted heavy objects and weights with a sensitive part of his anatomy that should never be used for that kind of exercise. It was incredible.
 
But the best wild feeds for me were the ones that showed first run (actually not yet run) programs – like new episodes of Seinfeld, Law & Order or Star Trek: The Next Generation, as they were being fed to the network for later broadcast. They contained no commercials, you got to see the titles and in one memorable slate from Star Trek, you heard the actor who played Odo (the late Rene Auberjonois) testing the audio. “This is the left channel,” he said. “This is the right channel. Centre. Surround.” Then a pause before he finished by saying, “Don’t screw it up!” I only wish I’d kept a copy of that.
 
All you had to do to get all this stuff - for free – was swing your dish from one satellite to another, once you had programmed them into your receiver. It was that simple.
 
When stations and networks started to scramble their signals, the industry responded with something called 4DTV, which let you pay for those formerly free signals and – unlike cable – pick whatever you wanted. So if all you desired was HBO and ESPN, that was all you paid for.

I always opted for a package that gave me all the U.S. networks from various places, which allowed you to monitor a few otherwise unreachable markets. For example, they uplinked WNBC in New York, but your ABC affiliate was WPLG in Miami. Watching their local newscasts after prime time was fascinating. There was also a package that gave you the west coast network feeds, which consisted of stations in L.A., San Francisco and Seattle, among others. And the Denver 5 package allowed you to get Mountain time feeds from the Mile High City.
 
Which meant, in those pre-streaming days when you could only record one show at a time on a VCR, you could receive the U.S. affiliates from three separate time zones, allowing you a lot of leeway if a few good programs were on against each other.
 
If you could speak Spanish, the Morelos satellites beamed Mexico TV into your living room. Never did get the lingo, but the spots were certainly interesting. Canada had its own share of stations on the Anik birds. You can see what was on them in the list below.  
 
It was an amazing time for those of us lucky enough to be able to indulge in it, but like all good things, it had to come to an end. Programmers like HBO took their signals off 4DTV, the wild feeds gradually disappeared and digitized – and therefore were no longer receivable – and the programmers who sold this stuff to the consumer slowly faded away. The small dishes, like DirectTV and Dish Network, have replaced the old C-Band for most. But it’s too much like cable, paying for packages of stations you never watch just to get the ones you do.
 
My dish still stands in the backyard, unmoved to any satellite for years, waiting for me to one day pay someone to take it down. (I remember when it was put up and my neighbours asked me if they were going to get a dose of “radiation” because of it!) Not sure how many here ever had the chance to dabble in this hobby, but while it lasted it was, quite literally, the best TV on TV. And while the Internet has made things a lot easier, for TV fanatics like myself, this was a great time that will never happen again. But boy, was it fun while it lasted.
 
The Dish:



The Receiver:

 
The TV Guide:


 
The Anik satellites, circa 1984: