Satellite television C. Clarke proposed a worldwide communications system which would function by means of three satellites equally spaced apart in earth orbit. This was published in the October 1945 issue of the Wireless World magazine and won him the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963. The first public satellite television signals from Europe to North America were relayed via the Telstar satellite over the Atlantic ocean on 23 July 1962, although a test broadcast had taken place almost two weeks earlier on 11 July. The signals were received and broadcast in North American and European countries and watched by over
Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite Super Bowl VII. The decision paid off handsomely for the network, attracting 51 percent of the television viewing audience to become NBC’s highest rated program of the year. Viewing figures were estimated to be between 1 and 1.5 billion viewers worldwide: more people than saw man landing on the moon. The show was the most expensive entertainment special at the time, costing $2.5 million. On July 8, 1972, inspired by a recent visit made by U.S. President Richard Nixon to China a few months earlier, Presley's manager, Colonel Thomas Parker, announced that there would be a worldwide satellite broadcast from