United States Satellite Broadcasting was a

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center ...

-based

satellite television Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna com ...

company that ran from 1981 to 1999. It was absorbed into

DirecTV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. I ...

in 1999.

History

USSB was founded in 1981 by

Hubbard Broadcasting Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc. is an American television and radio broadcasting corporation based in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was founded by Stanley E. Hubbard. The corporation has broadcast outlets scattered across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, ...

President Stanley S. Hubbard, who is widely considered to be the father of modern satellite broadcasting. Hubbard spent most of the 1980s raising awareness and money to launch a digital satellite television service. In the 1990s, he had teamed up with

Thomson Consumer Electronics Vantiva SA, formerly Technicolor SA, Thomson SARL, and Thomson Multimedia, is a French multinational corporation that provides creative services and technology products for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Vantiva's headq ...

and Hughes Electronics to come up with a practical digital satellite service capable of 175 channels. The original name of the service was HUBTV, named after Hubbard, but was soon changed to USSB. Other key early executives were his sons Stanley E. Hubbard, II and Robert Hubbard, as well as Paul Heinersheid, and Bernard Weiss. When the service launched, USSB offered a comparatively small slate of channels, but included almost all of the major American premium channels and any channel in which Viacom had a stake at the time (which included the

MTV Networks Paramount Media Networks (formerly known as Warner Cable Communications, Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment, MTV Networks, Viacom Media Networks, and ViacomCBS Domestic Media Networks) is an American mass media division of Paramount Global tha ...

). Lacking any news channels, Hubbard instead used its in-house All News Channel, operated as a cooperative of Viacom and Hubbard-owned stations, as well as stations owned by other groups via the CONUS satellite network Hubbard operated. Hughes offered programming from most other cable television channels under the banner of

; viewers used the same satellite equipment, branded as the DSS (Digital Satellite System), to access both services (with USSB's channel lineup starting in the 900s range). Though it wasn't a requirement to subscribe to both services, many did, resulting in customers receiving two separate bills. On March 10, 1998, the Viacom channels (excluding the Showtime networks) moved to DirecTV while USSB added fXM and Showtime Extreme to its lineup. Ultimately, the service was too small to succeed, with DirecTV outpacing it in channel capacity and marketing; an additional snag came when the DSS trademark was relinquished by DirecTV in a legal dispute. The Hubbards sold USSB to Hughes in December 1998, with only some employees transferring to DirecTV's El Segundo, CA headquarters and Castle Rock, CO uplink center from USSB's headquarters and uplink facility in St. Paul, MN; the channel lineup of USSB was integrated into DirecTV's lineup by mid-1999.

Channels

* HBO East ** HBO West ** HBO2 East ** HBO2 West **

HBO Signature Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television, premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office busi ...

** HBO Family East ** HBO Family West * Showtime East ** Showtime West ** Showtime 2 ** Showtime 3 ** Showtime Extreme * Cinemax East ** Cinemax West ** MoreMax *

The Movie Channel The Movie Channel (TMC) is an American premium television network owned by Showtime Networks, a subsidiary of Paramount Global operated through its Media Networks unit. The network's programming mainly features first-run theatrically released ...

East **

West * Comedy Central *

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

MTV2 MTV2 (formerly M2) is an American pay television channel owned by the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. The channel launched initially as an all-music video service, once the original MTV had started to shift its programm ...

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Group. It ...

* VH1 *

TV Land TV Land is an American pay television channel owned by Paramount Global through its networks division. Originally a spinoff of Nick at Nite consisting exclusively of classic television shows, the channel now airs a combination of recent and cl ...

* Sundance Channel * Lifetime * All News Channel *

Flix Flix () is a town in the '' comarca'' of Ribera d'Ebre, Catalonia, Spain. Situated on a promontory by the Ebro river, the town occupied an important strategic position. Situated on the Madrid– Barcelona railway line, it expanded in the ea ...

* fXM *Big Events (two PPV channels) ** TVKO (HBO's PPV arm at the time) **SET ( Showtime's PPV arm) *Channel 999 (previews)

References

** 1997-1999 only {{Telecommunications Direct broadcast satellite services Hubbard Broadcasting Technology companies disestablished in 1999 Defunct telecommunications companies of the United States Defunct television broadcasting companies of the United States Telecommunications companies established in 1981 American companies established in 1981 1981 establishments in Minnesota 1999 disestablishments in Minnesota