Being your OWN News Director with TVRO By Gary Bourgois, WB8EOH INTERNET: flash@lopez.marquette.mi.us GENIE: BIRDWATCHER There are two kinds of people in this world. Those to whom world events are a casual concern, and those who can only be called "News Junkies". My entire life I have been in category two, which is why I got heavily into Shortwave Listening, and a good part of how I got into broadcasting as a career. It was while working in Radio and TV that I saw news and information distribution evolve from wire line audio networks COAX video networks and klunking teletype machines to the vast web of newsgathering capability we have today. And wonder of wonders, I have seen the technology evolve to a point where YOU AND I can have sources of news and information available to us that only 20 years ago even the news moguls at the major networks could only dream about. By far, if YOU are a news and information addict, there is nothing that will add to your arsenal of news-ability like a home TVRO satellite dish. If you spend hours watching big events on CNN, or if you tune the shortwave bands looking for events as they happen, then YOU are a candidate for a satellite system. Once you have access to the skies, you will wonder how you ever lived without a home dish system. Once again, we need to point out that we are talking here about a full size satellite dish, not one of those teensy 18 inch pie plate DBS dishes, which will never be more than cable from the sky. ONLY with a true satellite system, one that has a 7 to 12 foot dish, do you have access to the uncensored and unedited events of the world. You will see and hear the happenings BEFORE they are edited or fall into the hands of the spin doctors. Your dish will let you hear the newsmakers and planet shakers BEFORE the networks plug into the interviews. In short you will have all the tools that a network news director has, including the UPI, AP, and REUTERS newswires. All coming to you by satellite. Warning: During major national and world events, you will be tempted to call in sick at work, and if your family are not as hooked no news as you are, some discord may occur as you will be locked away for HOURS following a big story. This article will get you set for a new life. A life as an individual more in tune with world events. A life as a dish head news junkie. You have been warned. Where do I start? You begin this journey by acquiring a home TVRO satellite dish. This can cost you anywhere from $50 for hamfest and scrounged equipment, to over a couple grand if you get the best of the best. Somewhere in between is where you will likely end up. Whatever your budget, there is a TVRO (TeleVision Receive Only) satellite system for you, if you have the desire and know the tricks of shopping around (See my Scrounger's Guide, available electronically by writing to flash@lopez.marquette.mi.us) The ideal newsjunkie system will consist of: 1. The biggest dish you can afford. A 10 footter will do you nicely, but make sure it is KU compatible 2. C/KU feedhorn and LNB's. 25 degree C band and .6 db Ku Band ratings are what you want. 3. An agile receiver with the ability to store your major news transponders in memory for quick access. 4. A VCR or two. You will want to save and review things you find in the sky. My system feeds three VCRs. It is faster than changing tapes when you are following multiple events. 5. A computer or good manual system for keeping notes and logs. 6. TIME. TVRO News Junkies often work in professions that allow them to stay home. Telecommuting is the answer! You will be spending a LOT of time during big stories scanning the skies. 7. Multiple satellite systems. Two dishes and a few slave receivers will add greatly to your abilities. Slave receivers are cheap, you can even get a brand new one in the $230 price category from places like SHOP AT HOME, a satellite delivered shopping channel that specializes in reasonably priced satellite equipment. A slave receiver does not have the ability to MOVE the dish. You will use your master receiver for that job, but the slave receiver will allow you to watch more than one channel on one dish. Since news feeds often are on the same bird, this capability will greatly help you 8. Infocipher. This is a device that is not widely known of, but with a subscription to Xpress Xchange you will have all the world's major news wires at your beck and call direct by satellite. The infocipher costs $150 or so, and the subscription fees are very reasonable. (Call 1-800-PC-NEWS for more information on the device and subscription) 9. An understanding mate. Fortunately my better half is every bit the news nut. Fortunately we have two dishes, because some times we are interested in different stories. She gets into court cases, and I go for the major disasters, and political intrigue. What am I going to see? There is nothing like a major world event to show you just how valuable your satellite system is. Even the casual TVRO user, who got his dish primarily to watch HBO and Star Trek KNOWS how interesting it can be to watch the big news events on satellite, since the C band network feeds provide running coverage of these events, while local TV stations and even CNN are off frying other fish. Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Riots and fires, scandals, these are the meat and potatoes of continuous news uplinks. Knowing where to look is part of the challenge of becoming your own news director. There are patterns to transponder usage, and you can figure these things out. Know where the major network feeds are (CBS on G7/G4, ABC on T-401, NBC on K2) and then learn where the feeds get THEIR source material (Usually KU BAND). You will want to check the CONUS news feeds on SBS-6, the KU side of G4, and old reliable G*STAR 4 which always light up with remote truck uplinks. Seeing reporters setting things up and rehearsing their texts, listening to the RUMORS that they can't put on the air yet, and hearing the politicos and others speaking candidly when they THINK the cameras are not running, well that is just the spice to put on your meat and potatoes. One thing that happens during a major event is that the local stations begin continuous coverage for the viewers in the affected area. During Hurricanes, for example, you will find all the big TV stations in the area being uplinked to satellite. This is done so that interested network affiliates and network shows can pick off parts of the coverage for use in their newscasts. You will be watching say, ABC NEWS NOW, and they will cut away for 5 minutes of the MIAMI NBC affiliates local coverage to show the network viewers what is happening. Then they drop it and go on to other stories. BUT if you are interested in the big event, you can watch it CONTINUOUSLY LIVE on satellite. And if you are really deep into the story, you can go and find the KU band uplinks that are going to that station from their field reporters. While microwave may be used for many local feeds back to the station, it is often necessary to use a KU truck because of buildings or other terrain problems. AND you can pick up those trucks direct, and see the reporters putting their stories together. If you have multiple receivers and dishes, you can put one dish on a main feed, as we did during the Los Angeles Riots. Say we select KABC as our main viewing channel. You will likely find it on C band on Telstar 401. You then tune to KU and go hunting. Soon you will get to know the reporters who are covering the story, and can find them setting up their cameras and microphones on, say SBS-6. Indeed, you really DO get to know the reporters, because when you watch them BEFORE they go on the air, you feel as if you are part of the news crew. Their true personalities come out. You will learn, for instance, that Connie Chung is a warm and wonderful human being who is sensitive to the feelings of the people she is covering, and also works very well with her crew, whom she respects and jokes with. Conversely you will find Sam Donnelson is a mean spirited self centered man given to temper tantrums. I have seen him throw the microphone on the ground saying he is NOT going to recut a standup, and go storming off. This is just an added bit of spice for our meal of news coverage... In addition to the really big stories that really capture us, your Satellite System gives you access to hours upon hours of news coverage that your cable and off air bretheren will never see. These are the national and regional feeds of the major networks. CBS NEWSNET and ABC NEWSONE and the afternoon NBC news feeds run for hours. Here you can follow regional stories that never make the big national news shows, but may interest you because you used to live in that area, or have friends that do. It is kind of a rush also to see the raw footage from your OWN town be uplinked on the birds. On more than one occasion, I have even seen the little berg of Marquette Michigan on ABC NEWSONE. In fact the uplink truck was three blocks from my home. (It was dogsled races, we have them every year). The regional feeds run primarily in the mid to late afternoon and on a regular schedule. Example: If interested in things happening in Texas and Oaklahoma, ABC Southwest feed runs at 5:30 Eastern on Telstar 401, followed by the Denver feed. Knowing when all the news feeds for various regions run will help you in tracking a news story. Sometimes the networks get stuck on a couple of stories, giving them inordinate coverage. Recently, the coverage of the Bobbit Trials and the Tonya Harding incident, while ignoring stories that I was interested in, such as the WACO trial. Fortunately, with access to the newsfeeds, you get a wider variety of stories, and if you know where to look you can find what YOU want to see, not what the NETWORKS want to see. You can see stories in their raw form. The uncensored aspect of the raw feeds can be very interesting. During a recent strike, we saw the confrontation between the strikers and a security guard, who had some very unkind words for them. Words that are not allowed to be broadcast on over the air TV, and indeed when the story showed on the CBS Evening News it was without the soundtrack about whose head he was going to bash in and how he was going to do it, complete with explitives that would make a sailor blush. You can see stories actually get SPUN by the newsdoctors. I have seen totally different plays put on a story than what I got out of it when I saw the RAW and UNEDITED footage. This aspect will wake you up a lot and may even infuriate you because you get the feeling that the news is MANAGED for the average couch potato. Indeed this is the sad truth. BUT with your DISH, you can see it all and then some. MINUS the twists and omissions. What about the big INTERNATIONAL stories? Most Americans have grown up with the attitude that there is only ONE way to look at the news, and that is the AMERICAN way. Of course, if you have a shortwave radio, you know that this is not always the case. Plus things are happening in other countries that affect entire regions of the planet that we know little about because the National networks just don't cover these stories. Watching news from other lands done by NON American newsfolk will really open your eyes to a totally different world view than the one you may presently hold. First, our neighbors to the North. Canadian News coverage is some of the best on Earth. By tuning in to the CBC you will find a different slant to news coverage. Of course you will learn a LOT about another country. You will get a lesson on Canadian Politics, quite different than our own. You will learn new names, and new issues. It will expand your horizons in many ways. You will see how Canadian law, and the Canadian outlook are different from what you are used to. You may find it fascinating, and you will feel more in touch and in tune with other ways of thinking. Also you will see a different spin on World Events. Major world stories with a new outlook. And then there is the VENERABLE British coverage. Here we have a number of sources available with a plain C band dish because both BBC news and ITN news are relayed over USA and Canadian domestic satellites. You know how good the news is on BBC world service radio, right? Widely recognized as the world leader in unbiased news coverage. Well this same type of reporting is found in their TELEVISION coverage. You may have to stay up til past 3AM to see it, but it is worth the wait. ITN news can be seen at 5PM on Telstar 401 KU band (Until it goes digital in 1995 anyway). There is also news in English from Dubai twice daily on Galaxy 7 channel 17, as well as Deutche Welle Television on C4 channel four. If you speak Spanish, there is a wide variety of Mexican and Latin American news on various satellites. You can watch evening news from Peru and Columbia. All on domestic C band satellite. And then there is the point from which there is no turning back. The addition of a horizon to horizon mount so you can pick up international satellites. If you live in the eastern USA, up to the Mississippi River, you can pick up signals from the Intelsats. Here you get live feeds from Reuters News, ITN, And BBC through out the day. Also NHK from Japan, TVE from Spain as well as the London news bureaus of CNN ABC and NBC. In some cases, you will find the TV standard is NOT NTSC, so you will have to invest in a PAL TV. However, if you don't mind watching in black and white, you can simply modify a small B&W set to pick up these signals. Just a little diddling with the controls in the back of the set will give you perfect pictures. With all the upheaval in world events, access to the Atlantic Satellites will give you a real leg up on news coverage. You may find yourself better informed than the news directors at any given news network. The reason is that THEY have access primarily to their own reporters, but they don't have the time to scan the skies for other coverage the way you and I can. We can watch the evening news from Moscow. We used to have SERBIAN news in english, but that service is gone, some say due to the United Nations getting involved. As I have written this article, I have been watching news feeds. I have an automatic progam device which follows a daily schedule of news feeds and on a day like today with no major news stories, I get a mix of regional feeds that just runs by itself, picking up the major news centers. I eventually plan to use a computer to do this for me, and have it swing the dish, though the system I now have using a CP8 TURBO programable remote does quite nicely with 32 programmable daily events. I can even set it to start different VCR's if I want to. But now it is almost what I call RUSH HOUR... The late afternoon early evening "Just before the newscast" stuff where I like to do a manual scan of some of my favorite KU birds, so I will leave you now and let you ponder the possibilities of joining the ranks of the true TVRO dish head news junkie. It could happen to you. And it WILL change your outlook and even your lifestyle. For the better. -- / Gary Bourgois, WB8EOH, The Birdwatcher: Marquette Michigan USA \ ([-o Radio Omega G3/17 5.8 - FRIDAY NIGHT LIVE Weekly 9PM Eastern o-]) \ Now a snazzy new DOMAIN address! flash@lopez.marquette.MI.US / GEnie: BIRDWATCHER FAX: (906) 228-7477 GWN BBS: (906) 228-4399