What are you planning to watch on TV tonight? “The Sopranos^®”? “ESPN SportsCenter^®”? There’s a good chance you’ll be watching a program that traveled through a PanAmSat satellite.

Through the sale and lease of their transponders—the part of the satellite that receives a signal from Earth, amplifies it, and then re-transmits it—PanAmSat satellites have become indispensable distribution links for literally hundreds of television programmers worldwide. In fact, PanAmSat is the world’s leading provider of commercial satellite services to the television industry.

Because of their ubiquitous signals, satellites are the most efficient and cost-effective way to distribute a video or data signal from one location to thousands of receive sites simultaneously. In the United States, for example, top cable companies and broadcasters use PanAmSat satellites to transmit their signals to the country’s nearly 11,000 cable head-ends.

PanAmSat’s customer list is the envy of the industry—ABC, A&E, CNN, Disney, Discovery Channel, HBO, ESPN, USA, The Weather Channel, and many more. And that’s just in the television market.

PanAmSat is equally active internationally, providing full-time domestic, regional and international programming distribution services to dozens of broadcasters, including non-U.S. companies such as the BBC, China Central Television, India’s Doordarshan and Japan’s NHK. In addition, PanAmSat satellites enable U.S. programmers such as ESPN, Discovery, Disney and HBO to reach targeted audiences around the world.

PanAmSat’s fleet of 20 satellites circles the globe in geostationary orbit, approximately 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth’s equator. In addition to cable and broadcast television distribution, they are used for corporate data networks, business television, satellite news gathering, distance learning, and special event broadcasts. They also provide a critical link to the U.S. Internet backbone for Internet service providers (ISPs) around the globe.

In addition, PanAmSat’s satellite transponders are leased or sold to direct-to-home (DTH) television providers. The PanAmSat global system today transmits more than 530 DTH television and audio channels worldwide, and serves as a platform for current and planned DTH television services in Australia, the Americas, South Africa and Taiwan.

For more information about PanAmSat’s services, visit the PanAmSat web site at www.panamsat.com.