From: jay@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Jay Novello)
Subject: What I watched on New Year's
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 22:50:13 GMT

Here's a short summary of monitoring from here in NC on New Year's Eve
and New Year's day (daylight hours).  I would have posted this sooner,
but Nubeluz--Tu Canal Feliz was up on S2/24...

Intelsat 601(C)-18:	Saw the German news station "n-tv" being relayed
by CNN London at 1810 EST.  Pretty much what you'd expect...like a
German CNN.

Intelsat 601(C)-11:	This was a treat.  BBC-TV 1 was being relayed by
NBC-London; when I get to see this at all, It's in black and white since
I watch it on an old analog receiver to fix the rolling effect.  This
was in glorious NTSC.  It was a comedy "Year in review" type show hosted
by an old geezer named Clive (he may be very famous, but not in the US).

The show was mostly film clips of UK and world leaders with funny
stories built around the clips.  Like the Queen's PR unit staging a
birthday for the Queen Mother whenever a disaster was happening in her
family to divert attention, etc. etc.  quite funny.

Clive's special guest was Elle MacPherson, and did she look
sensational!  They gave away a bunch of awards like "Woman of the Year"
(Her Majesty the Queen) and "Man of the Year" (Jason Donovan (!)); Elle
came out to help present the awards.  The Queen couldn't be there, but
Jason was.  He came out and did his version of "As Time Goes By" after
they showed Big Ben ringing in the new year at 1900 EST.  Then the whole
cast came out for "Auld Lang Syne" and that was a wrap for that show.

After that was a nice BBC-1 ID, the Bishop of Canterbury giving a New
Year's pep talk, another ID, then an old Michael Caine spy movie.  What
a treat to have two separate BBC services on one satellite (BBS WS is on
Channel 3 of this bird)!  This morning, it was back to the usual
NBC-London stuff.

Hispasat-25(KU):	TVE was relaying a commercial network from Spain
for the first time I can remember.  The network only identified as "1"
in their promos, so maybe domestic TVE-1.  Their New Year's show was
called "Y Ahora...Que?"; dancing, rock bands (Take That, Wilson
Phillips), good vocalists (one was Maria Vidal, a co-host), comedy skits
featuring more drag queens than I expected, the dreaded Julio Iglesias,
and !! naked women !!  Killer signal, as always, on this satellite.  I
noticed that there are no audio subcarriers on this relay; their channel
2 on Intelsat 601 has Spanish radio stations at 7.56 and 7.38,
approximately.

Anik E2-19(C):		Then I turned to CBC North, and the Royal
Canadian Air Farce was doing THEIR version of the Year in Review.  No
six-foot Australian supermodels in this show, just skits, music and
laffs.  Oh yeah, they gave away a number of Golden Donut awards.  They
wrapped up at 2200 EST.  I probably missed LOADS of stuff (Robert will
let me have it for this) but I was out of Champagne and went to bed
then.

The next morning...

Intelsat 601-11(C):	I saw a "Reuters" slide over a picture of the
Visnews control room on the 0915 EST Eurovision feed.  The voice ID loop
was "This is the primary audio circuit from Reuters Television
London".  So I guess the name change is official now.

Statsionar 4-1(C):	I've been looking for this one for a while now;
the signal was all but unviewable, but there was some programming on it,
not scrambled (probably SECAM) or color bars.  I'm not claiming an ID on
this, but it's listed as RTM Malagasy Republic.  Audio is supposed to be
at 5.8 with a radio subcarrier at 7.8; I'll be watching this one.
Cubavision was going strong (in a manner of speaking) on channel 6, 6.8
audio.

SBS6(KU):		I forget the transponder, but KTLA was uplinking
their Rose Bowl parade coverage here.  Loads of flowers, fun, and
dancing girls.

F4R-14(C):		I annoyed the neighbors while I was working
outside with WNWK for awhile today (8.23 ASC).  This is a pretty neat
station.  It was mostly a Mexican program playing mostly Norten~o music,
but some rock like Gloria Treby (or is that Preby).  They switched at
1400 EST to some kind of Russian religious program, so I decided to give
the neighbors a break.

Back to sky-scanning...and to cook a traditional NC New Year's dinner of
black-eyed peas, greens and cornbread.  See y'all in the irc chat
Sunday.
-- 
                   Jay Novello                 jay@ecsvax.uncecs.edu
University of North Carolina Institute for Transportation Research and Education
                         Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Newsgroups: rec.video.satellite