SES Americom - History

History

RCA American Communications (RCA Americom) was founded in 1975 as an operator of RCA Astro Electronics-built satellites. The company's first satellite; Satcom 1, was launched on December 12, 1975. Satcom 1 was one of the earliest geostationary satellites.

Satcom 1 was instrumental in helping early cable TV channels (such as Superstation TBS and CBN) to become initially successful, because these channels distributed their programming to all of the local cable TV headends using the satellite. Additionally, it was the first satellite used by broadcast TV networks in the United States, like ABC, NBC, and CBS, to distribute their programming to all of their local affiliate stations. The reason that Satcom 1 was so widely used is that it had twice the communications capacity of the competing Westar 1 (24 transponders as opposed to Westar 1’s 12), which resulted in lower transponder usage costs.

14 more (increasingly sophisticated) Satcom satellites would enter service from 1976 to 1992. In 1986 General Electric acquired RCA and renamed the Americom unit GE American Communications (GE Americom). From 1996 new satellites were named in the GE-# series, i.e. GE-1 in 1996, GE-2 in 1997 etc.