Mormons unite congregations: VSATs broadcast twice-yearly conferences

Communications News, March, 1990 by Kevin Tanzillo

MORMONS UNITE CONGREGATIONS

The Mormon Church is using VSAT technology to communite with its congregations at more than 2000 sites in North America.

The church, one of the fastest-growing denominations in the world, has doubled in membership in the last 10 to 15 years.

Communicating with its members is a challenge.

The church has used very-small-aperture terminals for 10 years and is adding downlink sites at the rate of about one a week.

Even with all that hardware investment, the church uses its network scarcely more than 100 hours a year.

But what goes out over the network is important to the Mormons-especially their twice-yearly general conferences, held over weekends in April and October.

"Since the beginning of the church in 1830 we have had regular conferences where we invite members and leaders to come and be instructed by the authorities of the church," says Jerry Cahill, the Mormon's director of media relations, based in Salt Lake City.

"Now that we are functioning in more than 100 nations, it is manifestly impossible even to get all the leaders here for a conference.

"And if they did come, where would we put them?

"Modern communications technology gives us an opportunity to communicate directly with people without them having to travel from around the world to get here."

Most of the church's VSATs are from Scientific-Atlanta, which had the contract for the first 1200.

Since then, the Mormons have bought them from other vendors as well.

Stake Center Downlinks

Downlinks are at "stake centers"--headquarters and church buildings in each of the 50 states, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.

"Stakes" are regional groupings of actual congregations, or wards.

Wards have 600 to 1200 members. Stakes consist of half a dozen to a dozen wards.

Some ward congregations have erected their own 3- and 3.2-meter dishes, often because they are too far from a stake center for easy travel there to watch the church's broadcast programs.

The church buys C-bad transponder time on the Westar IV satellite from a Salt Lake City company called Keystone Communications, in which the church has a financial interest. The uplink is at City Creek Canyon, about two and a half miles from Temple Square, where church programs originate.

Transmissions travel a fiber-optic line a few blocks to the Triad Building, where they are beamed by microwave radio to the uplink site.

Even Football Games

The church broadcasts such things as:

* women's conferences;

* selected Brigham Young University football and basketball games;

* "firesides," programs directed at parents, youth, or the general membership;

* and training sessions for church spokespersons, or for custodians on such subjects as repairing the asphalt in the parking lot.

Programs not designed for a particular gathering can be videotaped and stored in a library at the stake center.

The church had dabbled in making some sessions interactive. At one spokesperson-training broadcast, the audience at several sites was connected by dial-up phone links. Members could call in questions to the consultant conducting the program. Their questions and his answers were heard by all watching.

Broadening Reach

At the April 1989 general conference, the church transmitted internationally via the Pan Am Satellite.

The conference was beamed to earth stations in England, West Germany, and Costa Rica, with simultaneous translation to Germany and Costa Rica done by a United Nations-style service at the Mormon Tabernacle on Temple Square.

Satellite allows the church to provide 12 audio channels with a single video.

At the general conference a year ago, each channel carried a different translation. Languages were English, Spanish, French, German, Tongan, Samoan, Laotian, Cambodian, Hmong, Vietnamese, Korean, and Portuguese.

"For areas not served by the satellite system, we make videotapes of the conference sessions with soundtracks in a number of languages and then send the videotapes around the world. Members can view the conference at their convenience," says Cahill.

The church does not do missionary work nor fund-raising with its network; it is strictly for internal matters.

Bruce Hough, president of Keystone Communications, says the church uses its network about 100 hours a year. "They could be using it a lot more," he adds. "There are things they could do, such as language training for missionaries, but they are going slowly."

"Our general position is we want to take advantage of the breakthroughs in communication, but we don't want to be on the cutting edge," Cahill says.

"Whatever barriers there are to international transmission, as those barriers go down we hope to expand this."